It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. But it was the first time Owl taught me how to understand it.
 
I was awakened around 3:30 a.m. by the hooting of a great horned owl nearby. I couldn’t be sure where it was, but it was close—it might even have been perched on my balcony rail, just outside my bedroom sliding door. But I didn’t move a bit, because I didn’t want to interfere.
 
The owl hooted its rhythm. It waited. It hooted again. And so it went for nearly half an hour. I lay there, enchanted.
 
All by itself, it would have been enough. But later, when I was with Owl in the Glen, he asked me if I’d enjoyed his cousin’s morning serenade. I might have known there would be a connection!
 
“Oh, yes, very much,” I replied. “Did you send him?”
 
“Yes, but no. Well, not exactly.” Owl paused, his eyes closed. After a moment, he continued. “You see, it’s not that I communicated directly with the owl you heard, nor did I say anything specific. But since you’ve been working with me on the Tales a lot lately, I wanted to send you a gift from my heart. So I planted the feeling in my heart that I wanted you to enjoy. I know you like hoots. And then the Great Mystery that connects us all sent my cousin to you. There’s a word for that—do you know it?”
 
“I think so,” I answered. “It’s called synchronicity. But I thought it was a law. I would have said that my work with you and the Tales attracted the great horned to my neighborhood. Is that not correct?”
 
“What does your explanation leave out?” Owl asked. I had to think hard. But then I saw.
 
“It left out you! It left out your intention,” I replied.
 
“Ah, good,” Owl said. “So have you learned something? Or do you need to cogitate more?”
 
I was quiet for a long time. Owl always gives me time to cogitate. Gradually a marvelous idea began to form.
 
“Let me try this out,” I said to Owl. He nodded. “This is so beautiful, I can barely believe it. Maybe it isn’t just a law about synchronicity. Maybe what we humans call a law is really all the realms in communication with each other. If you could communicate, through the Mystery, with the great horned and with me from the Glen, then maybe the whole cosmos is in conversation within itself. Maybe it’s all aware and not only connected, but talking to itself, in itself, for the sheer joy of it.”
 
Owl’s chest feathers fluffed out and he said, “I’m so proud of my apprentice! Yes! Never think the universe is inanimate. As the Wizard has taught us, everything is alive, everything is aware. Tell them! Invite them to open to this understanding—for the joy in it.”
 
You are invited…