Whales are mysterious. They live most of their lives hidden from view. And yet, when they rise to the surface of the ocean they take our breath away. Their length, their girth, and their massive presence fills us with awe. These giant creatures live side by side with us in a world that completely slips away from our view. Most of us live our lives unaware of their presence. We have no clue as to the impact they have on the great oceans of the world, Mother Earth and on us as human beings.
It is no accident that Native Americans refer to the Creator and Creation as The Great Mystery. There are things in life that cannot be explained. We can measure and test, catalog and identify the Humpback Whale, but we cannot measure the human response we have when one of these magnificent annimals soars through the air twirling its massive body completely out of the water. On whale watch boats children gasp and hold onto their mothers and fathers. Adults squeal in delight like children on a merry go round. Captains stop their engines and stand pressed against the rails on the flying bridge. We all press our bodies forward towards the rail hoping to get one inch, one breath closer to the mystery we are witnessing.
Whales are mysterious. They live in a world we can enter for only moments at a time. They have secrets we know nothing about. They have songs that travel around the world. They use sound in ways that we will never understand. We can only guess at what they are communicating in their secret language. Whales have patterns of behavior that we can only speculate at as well. Do they breach to aid their digestion? Do they breach to knock off barnacles? Do they breach as a form of communication? Do they breach for the sheer joy of movement and flight? Or do they breach because they love to fly?
Whales are mysterious and we want to be inside that power, inside that awe. We have ignored our souls and our inner longings. The whales wake up our inner lives. We want to witness the sacredness of life.We want to feel how sacred life is. We want to remember that we too are sacred.The whales shift our consciousness away from bills, work and our dissatisfaction with life. When a Humpback suddenly appears, out of what seems like nowhere, we let go of our fear, our outrage and our self-doubt for just an instant. We gasp, unencumbered by the burden of self. We are momentarily free.
Most of us have forgotten who we are. Lost in the tedium of our day to day lives we have forgotten that we are spiritual beings. We barely remember our souls. The Lakota call their children “Wakan yeja” which translates to sacred beings. We are all children of the Great Mystery. We are all sacred beings. But, sadly we forget. It is as if we have put to sleep by the drone of infomercials, Wall St., Congress, Wi-Fi, and our own desires.
Over time we morph into a mere host for our desires. Our desire overwhelms the scared in life. It replaces song and beauty with a persistent drone that buzzes in our head. We become disappointed when we do not fulfill our desires. We wonder why we have headaches. It was all supposed to make us happy. We faithfully believed the lies that we held on to. In reality each lie took us further and further away from our sacred center. None of it is as it was promised on television. Our souls wait for recognition but we cannot see our inner light. We are blind to our own beauty.
Then suddenly, without warning, like sheer magic, a magnificent creature soars majestically out of the depths of darkness to the heavens. We are lifted outside our lives when one whale breaches and jumps to the sky. Against all reasoning and Las Vegas odds, forty tons of flesh and blubber hurls itself out of the water and becomes airborne! Our fear is momentarily suspended and we let go. For those precious moments we stand in the presence of this Great Mystery. We are less than a city block away from the mysterious. In that moment we remember that we are alive. We intuitively grasp that we are connected to something far greater than ourselves.That is all we ever wanted.
Being in the presence of the whales stops us in our tracks. Their presence is so imposing that we cannot ignore them. In their presence we squeal with childlike delight. In that squeal we are able to let go of a thousand pounds of pressure, and smile. We may even become aware that we stopped breathing, months, maybe years ago. It has been a long time since we inhaled a long sweet breath of sea air and felt its cold trickle through our nostrils and down our throats. It has been a long time since we felt alive. The whales remind us that we have a sacred center. The whales help us to remember who we are.
The whales are the ancient ones. They were alive and following a deep ocean melody while our great grandparents were alive. Some of the very same whales that are still alive today may have swum under our ancestor’s boats as they left their homeland to find a better life for future generations. And with their songs they tell stories. North Atlantic Right Whales may have told Southern Right Whales of a ship’s passage through seas that seemed to stretch on forever. They may have heard the lament of a poor Cuban or Rwandan or Jewish boy who had to leave their home, and all they held dear to their heart, in order to survive. They may have silently escorted our father’s or grandfather’s navy vessel as it sailed. There are whales that have lived deep in northern seas that have been here for over two hundred years. They know the stories of slave ships crossing the great oceans of the world.They remember when John Newton wrote Amazing Grace and sang it for the first time. Perhaps they even know what is in a person's heart when they are lost and waiting to be found.