Seeing river otters got me thinking about God. And seeing an eagle with a broken wing got me thinking about harmony and destiny and what happens when the link between them is broken.
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Then I realized that being in harmony with your destiny is where joy, beauty, and awe are found—all gifts from God—and that when the link between them is broken, sadness can be the result. And all this happened at a little-known but first-class aquarium in North Carolina, of all places: the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores.
It occurred to me, watching these otters play, that there’s something in the human animal that recognizes the marriage of harmony and destiny and feels joy observing it. The combination of both—being in harmony with your destiny—is fulfilling God’s will for what you are meant to do, and it is there that joy, beauty, and awe are found: the kind the human animal understands on a silent, spiritual level.
Those otters frolicking in water? Pure joy. They were doing what they were born to do. You don’t think, “Oh, I am feeling joy now, and here’s why.” You just feel it, and you probably won’t articulate why, even in your own thoughts, because you just understand it.
Consider: When we observe a great athlete performing at his peak, it’s thrilling, isn’t it? (“The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat.”) When we observe a magnificent work of art and find beauty in it, it’s something both primal and spiritual that rings out like a deep bell in our souls, telling us, “This is it. This is the apex.”
Like carving a gentle veil out of solid marble. It’s awe-inspiring. It is a kind of holy synthesis that we recognize, on a fundamental level, when one of God’s creatures has done or is doing what they were born to do, and that’s the harmony of which I speak. When one simply is, or produces something in harmony with one’s destiny, the world stills to see and feel awe or joy.
The veiled virgin, photo by John E. FitzGerald. CC BY-SA 3.0.
And that’s what I felt watching the otters at the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores in coastal North Carolina last week. Joy.
My husband and I have been to some of the world’s great aquariums: Monterey Bay, Boston, etc. But this little-known aquarium, tucked on the shores of the second-biggest estuary in the continental United States, after Chesapeake Bay, was a first-class, top-shelf experience.
And why? Well, it hadn’t occurred to me until just this second, as I was typing this, but the aquarium itself falls under my general theory of something doing what it was born to do and, therefore, giving others joy.
This aquarium didn’t try to be something it wasn’t. It didn’t have a tank of tropical fish just because tropical fish are colorful and everyone likes clownfish because of Nemo. No. This aquarium featured fish and other water-related animals found naturally in North Carolina, from the western mountains to the mighty Atlantic.
The aquarium even organized itself by North Carolina region: Mountains, Piedmont (an area in the interior of North Carolina), Ocean, etc. Wherever there was North Carolina water, there went the aquarium, telling us, wonderfully, about the species that lived in it or near it.
But that’s just the aquarium itself, doing what it was clearly born to do: showcase North Carolina’s abundant water-related life. It was an animal there that I saw after the otters that got me thinking again, this time about what it means when you are not doing what you were born to do.
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Now, to be sure, life matters. This eagle had been rescued after an accident had broken her wing, and she’d surely have died had she not been rescued. The naturalists at the aquarium do everything possible to care well for her so that she can thrive despite her now-partially-amputated wing, but there was something sad about her.
She has a companion, another eagle with a partially amputated wing, so at least they have each other. I never saw the second eagle. She allowed us to regard her, ticking her head back and forth, as she might do were she flying and looking for prey or danger. It occurs to me that I don’t think eagles scan for friends, do they?
I wondered what she thought of us. She clearly spied us and rested her eyes on us for a bit. And when our eyes met, however briefly, I did what came naturally: I tried to discern what was behind them. Was she content?
I know it was a gift for me, as a human, to have such a lengthy, sustained look at an eagle who was seated and still. I definitely had the sense that she did not so regard seeing me. It was not a gift to her to see me, and not just because I was a 61-year-old woman in comfortable shoes. No, I got the sense that she’d rather be flying and found all of us humans a parade of strange.
The link between harmony and her destiny had been broken as surely as her wing had. As an eagle, she had been destined to fly.
Now, when such a thing befalls humans, sadness needn’t be the final result; it can mean temporary sadness on the way to transformational change, and that can be a good thing. (When God closes a door…) I comforted myself with the thought that at least she doesn’t have to worry about starving anymore. Nor does she have to worry about being killed by another creature, so there’s that.
But I had to wonder—no, I knew—she missed flying, and that’s what tugged at my heart. Because, unlike a human who’s facing transformational change, she lacks the ability to think that through. Not a lot of philosophy is going on in an eagle’s mind. Being an eagle is what goes on in an eagle’s mind.
So I found God in an aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina. And the creatures there stirred something deep within me, and that was their gift to me: linking forever in my mind that harmony with one’s destiny equals beauty, joy, and awe—and that God is found there.
I can only hope the many varied and magical creatures there, broken and unbroken, regard us as a gift to them.
Image created using AI.
M. Walter also publishes on her blog, www.mwalterwriter.com. There she posts a daily curation called “The Lunatic Left Series.” If you simply can’t take their toxicity but still want to know what they are up to, TLLS will keep you informed without getting high doses of their radiation. You’re welcome 😉
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