I have just read Margaret Craven's “I Heard The Owl Call My Name”

Charming, simple, reflective. A tribute to indigenous culture and the 'outsiders' who have served them. ****

Some memorable quotes include:

'Don't be sorry for yourself because you are going to so remote a parish. Be sorry for the Indians. You know nothing and they must teach you.' (p5)

'The whole life of the swimmer is one of courage and adventure. All of it builds to the climax and the end. When the swimmer dies he has spent himself completely for the end for which he was made, and this in not sadness. It is triumph.' (p36)

The next day he knew also the exhaustion which is the price of courage. (p43)

'You suffered with them, and now you are theirs, and nothing will ever be the same again.' (p71)

Mark walked alone by the river's edge, clinging to the lovely day. 'Don't go – not yet – not yet -' but the day slipped away as fast as any other. (p79)

'The church belongs in the gutter. It is where it does some of its best work.' (p82)

'Mark, I cannot come home again. I have changed too much. It is my mind that has changed. I can never come home again.' (p103)

'I ain't much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I'm an agnostic. I don't know.'
'There's a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows much – only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.' (p110)

… the last words of the committal, 'Rest eternal grant unto, O Lord,' … (p122)

When he had first come to the village, it was the future that loomed huge. So much to plan. So much to learn. Then it was the present that had consumed him – each day with all its chores and never enough hours to do them. Now time had lost its contours. (p123)

To join the others was to care, and to care was to live and suffer. (p132)

“Past the village flowed the river, like time, like life itself, waiting for the swimmer to come again on his way to the climax of his adventurous life, and to the end for which he had been made.”

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