Symbol of God:The Kingfisher

INSPIRATION
OUT OF THE BLUE

On a wall of her living room, a late friend of mine, Eleanor Robinson, had a painting of a kingfisher. I found the picture’s colors and its subject fascinating. Eleanor said, “My niece painted it”. Eleanor went on, “The kingfisher represents the sudden inspiration that comes to us from out of the blue.”

At the time, I didn’t think about what Eleanor had said or ask her about it. But I remembered the painting and what Eleanor had said. I even mildly, and to myself, coveted the painting.

In a book I had read before, but apparently had not taken full notice of, I again discovered the symbol of the kingfisher: as inspiration that darts into our consciousness as quickly and unobtrusively as a kingfisher swoops from tree limb to water and back again with a tasty morsel of fish. A flash of blue!

Laurens Van der Post, originally from Dutch South Africa, is one of my favorite authors. Van der Post’s book, "Jung and the Story of Our Time" is also a favorite of mine. In that book the author writes of his long friendship with Carl Jung, a world-renowned and respected psychologist. Van der Post also writes of the kingfisher and inspiration.

Van der Post writes: “The vision came to him [Jung] in kingfisher blue wings. Jung painted it with an electric-blue immediacy that to this day is quite startling. Several hours afterwards, walking in his garden by the lake, Jung found a dead kingfisher lying there. The bird in any case was rare and he had never seen one there before, nor was he to see one again.

Since the kingfisher always and everywhere from Stone Age man to Stravinsky has been the image of the inspiration: the unthinkable thought which enters ourselves like a bird, unsolicited, and from out of the blue, it was for Jung, as a Zen priest once put to me, one of the signs of confirmation from nature that sustain the spirit in its search for enlightenment and emancipation from the floating world of appearances.”

Among the wonders that I, Marylee, believe are spiritual gifts from the Creator to each of His created, men and women of all ages, and creatures, as well, I will now put the “out of the blue” phenomenon that any one of us may experience at a time of need or felt desire.
Collected by Marylee Manson Armour,
with a comment added.
December 16,1994