Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning – The Marginalian

One day at dawn in September on the verge of an important life transition, I was sitting on the dock of my poet friend, I saw a great blue queen rising slowly and historically through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since then, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what indigenous cultures call a spirit animal. It has shown up in good times in my life, when I was desperate for validation. It was the first bird I worked with in my divination books. In times of sad uncertainty and yearning for resolution, I have found in the long silence of a bird of prey, waiting for the right moment to do the next right thing, a living divination – a great blue reminder that patience respects the possible.

It is foolish, of course, to believe that this vast and impartial universe sends us, fleeting star-spots, personal signals about how to live the universal danger of our lives. However, it is as foolish to question the meaning of a bird as it is to see it as a random combination of feather and bone. Truth lies somewhere between story and meaning. One makes us, the other made us to bear our death and the confusion of life. Meaning comes from what we believe to be true, truth is an eternal truth whether we believe it or not. That is the difference between signs and omens. Symbols do not respect the nature of reality, while omens reflect our search for meaning, respect for the sovereignty and mystery of the universe — they are a dialogue between consciousness and reality in the poetic language of belief.

A bird is never a symbol, but it can be an omen if our attention and purpose are aligned with it in that golden thread of personal worth and purpose that makes life meaningful.

Jarod Anderson also turns to the great blue heron as a lens in our search for its meaning Something in the Forest Loves You (public library) – his tragic meditation on surviving the darkest bowels of human nature, the strange combination of shame and sadness that gives depression its destructive power, by turning to the light and value of nature. What emerges from the pages is a lyrical love letter to how “imagined compassion” heals and harmonizes our relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to the wonder of life.

Reflecting on the difficulty of explaining his life and the many symbols of the great blue heron — among them an ancient legend in which the bird dusts the water with golden starlight to attract bluegill — Anderson writes:

Queen is exactly what vodka is to you when you choose to give it meaning. It will be that meaning until you decide it means something else. That's how the definition works. It is an independent act of translation.

You might get the impression that I'm saying herons don't mean anything, but that's not what I'm saying at all. If I see a crocodile and interpret its behavior as a reminder to slow down and think about what is important in my life, that is what the crocodile is saying. That is, like most crafts, it takes place in collaboration between the maker and the materials.

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Queen allows me to create the meaning I need when I need it. Making meaning in this way is like making harmony with two words… The problem starts when we forget about our participation in creating harmony, of meaning. When we remove our involvement in making meaning, we begin to think holistically.

Whenever we think holistically, we ossify. Our freedom always lies in our flexibility, and because concepts like meaning and identity are not fixed, because, as Anderson notes, they “require our intentional participation,” they are “mercifully flexible.” They take the form of our beliefs about who we are and what we deserve, and they carry out the messages we send ourselves through the physical statements we make.

Watching herons walk along her neighborhood's shores, she feels they are sending her a “clear message” about the power of “peaceful thinking and self-determination,” Anderson writes:

A queen only stands for independence when I need it. That does not diminish the power of the gallows. It just highlights mine.

There are objective truths in the world. Yes they are. But our sense of self, our value, our sense of whether or not we deserve to take up space in the universe or find happiness and satisfaction – these are not questions of fact, questions of meaning.

For those of us who find solace in nature, the idea of ​​meaning has to do with the abundance of sea and sky and songbird, of everything that makes this planet earth. You can call the contact that you are wondering. You can call it magic. “If you don't think herons are magical,” Anderson wrote, “you need to expand your definition of that word.”

Looking back on a dark period when depression flooded the skies of his mind and robbed the world of wonder, he reflects:

There are two forms of magic: Imagination and attention. Imagination is the fiction we love, truths made up of lies, burning dust on water. Mindfulness is about intentional awareness, participating in meaning making to lend new weight to our world. An acorn. The geometry of the beehive. The complexity of whale song. The perfect slowness of the heron.

Real magic requires your intention, your choice to be consistent. Yes, of course. The queen can't cast starlight in the shallows to get to the bluegills. Not unless you do your part. You must choose to meet him halfway. And when you do, you may find that magic is not about abandoning reality. It is its combination, the nectar of truth becomes the honey of meaning.

In the remainder of the Something in the Forest Loves YouAnderson continues to look through the lens of the search for meaning through a kaleidoscope of living wonders, from sugar maples to red-tailed hawks to morel mushrooms. Join Loren Eiseley on warblers as a lens on the wonder of existence, then revisit some of humanity's greatest writers on nature as an antidote to depression and Terry Tempest Williams on the bird in the heart.