After a cursory glance around the room, usually visitors look at me a little strangely on their first visit. My office is replete with replicas of owls of different shapes, compositions, sizes. One hundred of my parliament of owls reside in a four tiered curio cabinet home; the rest are perched in any convenient space in the office (and in my room at the Jesuit Residence!). I know precisely when owls began to gather around me. 1969.
Fred Benda, S.J. who was studying theology with me at Regis College in Willowdale, Ontario gave me an orange plastic owl. So 60's a look. Since then I have been flocked. No explanation came with that first owl nor with any of the hundreds that followed in the past 47 years!
Why the owls and me? Perhaps because, as a introvert, I have a penchant to listen and look, to need much alone time, to be uncommunicative. I need much time to think, and I prefer to have a role or purpose in interacting with others. These traits are associated with Type #5 “The Knowledge-Seeker” or “The Observer” in the Enneagram system of understanding oneself. Curiously the animal symbol of a healthy Type #5 is the owl! (The unhealthy symbol is the fox [wily, and hoarding]). Some Native American cultures maintain a rite of passage, a vision quest (other names are used too). The person prays asking for something that will help them find their purpose in life, or their role in community, and how they may best serve.
Dreams or visions sometimes involve symbols, animals or forces of nature. Discovery of one’s Totem apparently can help reveal important elements of one’s identity. I have never been on a quest, but I do remember one vivid dream during my Tertianship retreat in 1976. I was flying, yes, flying, soundlessly over the fields, roads, farms, railroads, marvelling at an aerial view of landscape I only knew from a terrestrial viewpoint. The terminus was my Grandmother’s grave at the small village of Vibank in Saskatchewan. It was a startling experience and one that made me think that perhaps the owl is my totem.
My attachment to the collection through the years was sufficient to transport them from Toronto, to Winnipeg, to Montreal, to Regina, and then back to Winnipeg! It has remained with me because each owl is a connection to places, people, events. Each owl turns on a video in my head. Some clips are just a few seconds long, others well developed:
A beautifully carved owl prompts the Bavarian craftsman in his shop near the Frauen Kirke in Munich; the gilt Royal Crown Derby and Aynsley china owls stir up the streets of London and the English landscapes viewed from a train;
A large china owl spins images of Fr. Jack Murray, S.J., the small town Santa Ponza on the large island of Majorca, Madame Grandpierre and Max’s villa on the top of the mountain, the white sand beach, the tiny pinpoints lights of fishing boats in the night, warm sun, aqua marine Mediterranean, the tepid waters and the weather withered woman, water waist high just below her dugs, feeding her school of fish, a pedalo splashing over still blue– prelude to a pina colada– a stroll on the board walk, the unique Lladro owl in the shop window:
five idyllic days of vacation, wonderful companionship, a time not even whining no-see-ums slipping through nights screens and by smoking repellant coils could mar. (The Lladro owl flew in Jack’s luggage first to Florence and finally to Winnipeg, landing to my delight on my desk);
the black bituminous owl conjures up a tall man, a parents’ association member of Loyola High School, Montreal, his gratitude and joy for his son’s contentment in the school, adding his own home New Brunswick treasure to my growing flock;
The silver owl perched on petrified wood, stamped with the 1995 fare well message “from all your friends at Loyola" calls forth myriad images of faces, spaces, feelings, and gratitude.
Yes, each owl tells its story; my parliament in the curio cabinet is a time machine of my past 47 years. I remember asking my mother in 1997 why she kept so many apparently useless little things from her china cabinet when ‘downsizing’ from her house in Balgonie to a small apartment. She said, “I like to look at them.” Today looking at my curio cabinet crammed with owls, I understand what she meant.
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All photos courtesy of Frank Obrigewitsch, SJ.