Logo

 

Banner Image:   Baptist-Times-banner-2000x370-
Template Mode:   Baptist Times
Icon
    Post     Tweet


Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington 


Melancholic yet hopeful, seeking to enable a fresh understanding of owls in the natural world, and our relationship with both



owl-sense-249x400Owl Sense
By Miriam Darlington
Guardian Faber 2018
ISBN 978-1-78335-074-2
Reviewer: Shaun Lambert



Miriam Darlington has consistently troubled herself with the wild, first with Otter Country and now with Owl Sense, her latest book. She cares fully for the ecological landscape that holds us and so has cultivated a deep attentiveness toward nature and its inhabitants. This is embodied, even spiritual awareness that recognises that our fragile, mysterious, ecstatic, painful lives are interwoven with owls who live close by us and yet are far from our understanding.

In this book she succeeds in bringing us closer to owls. With an ethnographer’s eye she immerses herself in the world of owls, which was veiled to me until I opened the book. In the process of my reading Miriam, as writer, seems to unveil the owl until I am filled with wonder. As my eyes are opened I begin to care for these creatures. I find myself standing on the edge with them, sensing their vulnerability to our mindless trampling of their home.

She weaves into the story of her research the tale of her own son’s vulnerability which is almost parabolic of our ecological intertwining. We think we are invulnerable and we think the world around is invulnerable but neither are true. Personally and corporately we too are subject to ecological fragility.

Her attention to detail is powerful. I am fascinated by owlish ears, that owlets hiss like rattle snakes, that owls can rotate their heads 270 degrees, that there are so many species of owls, that owls link us to Europe. I like her writing because she knows so many words and can name things for me.

The writing this time seems more melancholic, as if something of the symbolism of owls has entered her being, as she once became an otter. There is more of the black blood of sadness seeping from the pages.

But it is also a book to inspire hope, with a palette of emotional colour that matches the browns, ochres, sepia, gold, flax blond, beaten gold, soft clotted cream of the owls themselves. The author has a poetic imagination that sparks a muted poetic imagination in me. In the book she does not beat the reader over the head with fear but seeks to enable a reperceiving of the owls in the natural world. A reperceiving that leaves me wanting to be a participator in the preservation of the wild and not a spectator to its fall, not complicit in an unnatural extinction.

I leave the last word to the author and the aftermath of a short-eared owl nearly landing on her head mistaking her for a perch:


‘I sat dry-mouthed, heart thumping, owl-dazzled from the follicles on my scalp to the tips of my toenails.’


I believe I am owl-dazzled too.

 

Shaun Lambert is an author and minister of Stanmore Baptist Church



 

 

 

Baptist Times, 03/07/2018
    Post     Tweet
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
'Brings her unique experiences as a novelist to bear on the nature of the text, while sharing her insights as a female writer on the importance of women'
Giving the Church, by Michael Moynagh
Giving the Church is a comprehensive critique of how the church at large presents itself to contemporary society
A Handful of Pennies, by Afaf Musallam
This Palestinian Christian Arab woman’s long journey searching for identity and peace works on several levels
Easter Inside Out: The story as if you were there, by David Kitchen
​​'If this kind of retelling scripture is something you have never tried, this is a great place to start'
Raised to Stay, by Natalie Runion
The author uses her own trauma to reflect and share what she has learned; an engaging read but perhaps more suitable for a US context
365 Truths for Every Woman's Heart, by Holley Gerth
'A really useful resource that when everything gets too much in the day (or night), can provide a calming reminder of how God never leaves us or forsakes us'
    Posted: 21/03/2025
    Posted: 04/10/2024
     
    Text Size:  
    Small (Default)
    Medium
    Large
    Contrast:  
    Normal
    High Contrast