BROTHER LOON: "Songs to the Unknown Good"

Waiting on sleep, praying in Spirit, wondering about it all...I'm sitting alone on a quiet summer porch...dark hours gathering at these cabin steps, a small lake before me, paradoxically vast and eternal...and loons wailing, yodeling, hooting up and down the still lake. I've read that loons trace their lineage back millions and millions of years. And listening to them, I feel suddenly and gladly small, wildly and wonderfully insignificant...and grateful for my life. For a few moments at least, this mid-July night, I crave nothing, regret nothing, fear nothing.

Modern loons have been found in the fossil record as early as the Eocene- about 35 million years ago. Their relatives in the Gaviiformes Order can be traced back to the Late Cretaceous period (65 million years ago). In prehistoric times, loons lived much further south than they do today. Their fossils have been found in California, Florida, and Italy. They are one of the oldest lineages of birds on Earth.   (https://www.adkloon.org/loonnaturalhistory)

"With Kindness" (David Lone Bear)

I imagine them calling to the unknown, praising the darkness itself, singing soulfully to the simple and bounded span of their lives.  I imagine them aware--with every burst of song--that their universe is not a lonely place, that many are listening, that every call is cause for mystery and delight among the other loons, and even a human or two on the shore.  I imagine them singing to the bears and moose foraging in the forests, and to the Mi'kmaq and Wabanaki who cherish them as kin, and to the fish swimming in depths beneath.  Every hoot-hoot-hoot, an invocation.  Every yodel, an alleluia.

Up the coast last week, we met a Mi'kmaq storyteller, an artist named David Lone Bear.  And David introduced us to his painting (above) of Brother Loon.  He told us that the Mi'kmaq understand that Loon revels in his own beauty, his own wonder, his own connectedness to all that is; that Loon is even given to saying that he is as beautiful as the Sun itself.

Of course, the world questions how a bird so dark and black and at home in the night sky could be as beautiful as the Sun, as connected in communion as earth and sky.  The world of humans (or many of us, anyway) doubt the dark and unknown, even fear the black and brown and red.  

And yet, every bright and sunny day, Loon flies fast and free across the northern skies, basking in the light, nodding at the sun, reveling in his connectedness to all things, all beings, past and present and future.  And tonight, in the blackness of it all, Loon wails: plaintive and glorious, wildly mournful and delightfully free.  How can I not revel in a world such as this?!

David's brilliant painting hangs now in the cabin we love.  In another time and place, I might even call it an icon, so wildly and provocatively does it invite reflection, praise, bemusement and kindness.  In fact, in signing the painting for us last week, David wrote simply, on the back side, "With Kindness."  

Damariscotta Lake

Before we'd really introduced ourselves by name, he noted that western culture (read: religion) so often betrays the call to kindness in its traditions and texts.  And this hits home for me, sadly, truly.  He insists that what the Mi'kmaq can teach us, still ache to teach us, is the centrality of simple kindness, generous compassion, to human community and earth's circle of life.  When I mentioned my calling, David hesitated a moment, began to apologize, but caught himself.  "We can teach each other," he said.  "And Loon can show us the way."

I have so, so much to learn.  And for that I give thanks.

See David's work at www.lonebeararts.com.