The Owl

On Thursday night I heard the hooo-hooo of an owl outside the window at the parsonage. I don’t remember hearing an owl here before, and it got me to thinking about them. Since owls are nocturnal, some see the owl’s yellow eyes as a sign that the sun lives through the owl at night, even as it descends in a quick and precise silence to scoop up unsuspecting prey. In that way, owls bring both day and night, life and death, as they call out hooo-hooo into the unseen. The mythology of the owl includes guiding the dead to the afterlife. Life and death, sun and dark, together. That is the owl.