Is there anything more perfect than this photo of a kingfisher? It won an audience award a few years ago. For obvious reasons.
I was mesmerized by it at the time, because it was such an unlikely photo. That perfect shot, with such perfect clarity. Had to be touched up, right? No. Turns out it was just six months of 5,000 attempts at perfection. (There’s a lesson in there somewhere, I think…)
As it happens, there’s more to the kingfisher than meets the eye, especially when you go deeper and consider its symbolic meaning.
But first, a short aside. You may have noticed that I just finished a major redesign of my website. Since I’m a storyteller and a lover of symbolism, I wanted to find some way of giving the new site an underlying and unifying theme that would tie the entire experience up in a way that would be meaningful and beautiful. A story, if you like.
That unifying symbol … wait for it… ended up being the kingfisher. At first it was nothing more than a color scheme based on the kingfisher’s plumage. I loved it, and decided to make it the color scheme for my new site:
But then I started to read about the symbolism of the kingfisher. And it blew my mind.
Symbolic Opposites
The award-winning photo of the kingfisher is perfect, because it represents the ambiguity of the symbolism of the kingfisher. Just like the bird and its almost mirror-image in the water, the kingfisher is two opposite things at the same time. Take this incredible poem by Hopkins, for example:
As with so much of Hopkins’ poetry, the language is beautiful, but the meaning is hard to grasp. In a recent lecture that helped me understand the poem better, Professor Lynn Cohen says the following:
The kingfisher symbol here represents, paradoxically, both mortality and immortality. The iridescent plumage of the spectacular kingfisher begins as a symbol of robust and fiery life: “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw flame.” It moves to the death tolling warning “Each mortal thing does one thing and the same…”
The kingfisher is a notoriously shy bird, but almost paradoxically it is also one of the most obviously recognizable, because of its plumage and how the sun plays against its orange feathers like fire. So it can simultaneously symbolize such different ideas as serenity, calmness, as well as disturbance and the fire of revelation. In Hopkins, it symbolizes both mortality and immortality. But how can it be both?
In another poem, T. S. Eliot famously uses the kingfisher to unite opposites, completing Hopkins’ usage with it own. The line occurs in “Burnt Norton,” the first of his Four Quartets:
To get into the meaning of Eliot’s incredibly profound and complex poem isn’t the point here. The point is to show that poets have seen the kingfisher as a uniter of opposites. And both Hopkins and Eliot, committed Christians, resolved that apparent contradiction by clearly making the kingfisher a symbol of Christ.
Deeper Synchronicity
Turns out that connection between kingfishers and Christ goes deeper than you might think. There is a mystical figure in the Arthurian legends called the Fisher King, who for various reasons (depending on the legend) is suffering from a wound that will not heal. He is also, significantly, often a protector of the Holy Grail. That in itself is another image of opposites: the knight who guards the cup which gathered Christ’s blood from the Cross cannot himself be healed by it. At least, not until the promised Messianic figure of Galahad comes to claim what is rightly his.
Again. Mortality and immortality in a single figure who is associated, at least by name, with kingfishers.
Add to that C. S. Lewis’s riff on the Fisher King in his wonderful novel That Hideous Strength. Arthur Ransom, the man who saved two planets from demonic incursion, awaits his final test not as a warrior in armor, but as an invalid with a wound that will not heal. To make the connection that much more obvious, he calls himself, informally, Mr. Fisher-King.
He, also, will not be healed until the resolver of opposites, Christ Himself, releases him from his burdens.
The Kingfisher as a Symbol of Truth in Post-Covid Reality
There is something else, besides the kingfisher, that is so beautiful that it can’t be missed, but so shy you can hardly ever find it. It can also be simultaneously life-taking and life-giving It is a something that has retreated to the shadows since the pandemic hit. Something that it seems hardly anyone is interested in seeking anymore.
I’m talking about truth.
No, not about facts. Not about “the scientifically verifiable course of action that’s going to get us out of this mess.” No. I’m done with all that. It’s become clear to me that it doesn’t matter what facts or what numbers or what findings come out about this virus. People will believe what they want to believe, no matter what evidence they see.
But what about truth?
Truth is not the thing that you use to bludgeon people into submission to your point of view. It’s not that bit of information that will cause all of what we don’t know about the virus to fall into place. Truth is definitely not a vaccine.
Rather, truth is an experience of transcendent reality that leaves you with no doubt of its presence, but that you can’t find until you experience it directly. Truth is not an idea. It is an experience, and like the kingfisher it can only be captured with humility, patience, and many thousand attempts at perfection.
That’s the image that I aspire to with my writing, my podcast, my videos, and my courses. First and foremost, I seek to tell good and entertaining stories. But that storytelling, for me (and hopefully for you) is more than simple escape. I seek the consolation and enchantment (as Tolkien would have it) of truth, just like the photographer sought the kingfisher. Furthermore, I hope to do it quietly, humbly, sometimes passionately, but never in anger or despair. I think that’s the only way to do it now (as it perhaps has always been).
But now, more than ever, it is vitally important. Because people are making their own truth, their own meaning, their own stories out of the chaos of 2020. And most of these stories are black with despair, and seem to lead nowhere but ruin and death.
I invite you to come along with me, to sit in the metaphorical weeds quietly for days on end, until “the kingfisher catches fire” for you and for me. Some of these places include:
I hope to see you there, in any of those places, where we can have a chat over coffee as we wait for the kingfisher.
Speaking of living well in crisis, I created an exclusive audio miniseries on the power of stories and how they can do something even more important than give us courage. Stories can give us roots and connect us to ourselves and to others. Interested? Let me send you the series!
“It’s become clear to me that it doesn’t matter what facts or what numbers or what findings come out about this virus. People will believe what they want to believe, no matter what evidence they see.” In some sense it’s always been true, about everything. People think they see through information, though they see through stories; facts embodied in people and plots, in emotion and situation. There is no escaping this tendency, which makes the role of the writer and artist so important. That “transcendent” reality you referred to is the Great Narrative which, if we catch a glimmer of it, can help organize our own sub-narratives (sub-creations) in a way that points to what is true. Thanks for a great post!
Very well said, thank you!