After our vacation at the beach this summer, I blogged about an “immortal” sea creature I had learned of during some mother/daughter “veg” time. Well, we had more such time yesterday, and the result has been the revealing of even more deep sea marvels. Since my little girl and I were both sick and thus homebound, we spent some sweet time watching cartoons together; and for some reason, even though she is nine, my daughter chose the Octonauts and “The Very Vegimal Christmas.” She still so loves to watch those little characters swim around under the sea. And, I must confess now–I kind of do too. They have grown on me.:)
The last time we watched together we learned about the immortal jellyfish. This time we learned about brine/seafloor lakes and sea snot, with the timing of the latter seeming most appropriate as we’re both currently loaded down with congestion. As I pointed out before when I wrote about this cartoon, the deep sea phenomena that are introduced in each episode are “for real” (my daughter’s words). But, once again, I had some serious doubts and so I did my own informal research–and “for real” they are!
And dangerous they are too. Itty-bitty sea creatures that fall into brine lakes can actually be pickled, and flora/fauna as well as humans can suffer all types of harm if they come into contact with sea snot or even with the contaminated water around it. It turns out that my daughter’s been right all along–those Octonauts are educational. And everyone seems to love a story in which good triumphs; in this cartoon story, “Good” eventually sends the life-threatening sea snot to its doom by forcing it into a brine lake.
So, as I reflected on all of this learning, I thought much about how life above the sea tends to be, such as full of skepticism. I was initially skeptical of sea floor lakes that can produce pickled crabs and of blobs of a toxic jello-like substance that can wipe out all kinds of life forms. I, after all, had never even heard of such things, so I had most certainly never before seen such things. And most of us do tend to find it easier to believe in the existence of things that we’ve at least heard something about, and actually seeing things with our own two eyes (my daughter’s words again) appears to be a necessity for many. I’m generally no exception, as I needed Internet sea lake/snot photos to become convinced that the cartoon storyline was indeed “for real.”
I thought too about how weighty the things in life can get over time. Both of the natural phenomena I’ve described come to be over time. Salt gathers over time and eventually becomes a lake (a “dead” sea of sorts). Things like marine snow and phytoplankton, two examples of matter that makes up sea snot, accumulate over time and eventually become a hovering menace. These phenomena become death traps over time. Sea creatures draw closer and closer to briny shores and sticky edges over time. Life becomes more and more endangered over time. As a contemporary Christian song lyric from a few years back says, it’s a “slow fade.” Like most things in life though, the “fade” is significant cumulatively.
Yes, this lesson in marine biology made me think much of my own life. I want to continue to believe more and more in what I cannot see–I want to continue to believe that the “realest” life really is some other place altogether, some other place far more extraordinary than even the most beautiful sight at the bottom of the sea. The fact that certain things, both good and bad things, seem just too fantastic to really exist doesn’t at all mean they don’t–it just means that our understanding, our grasp, is severely limited by our humanity.
I also want to take inventory of the things I’m getting close to in this life. Whatever we spend most of our time closest to, our time immersed in, is what we ultimately become I think. And I can certainly see some briny shores and sticky edges in my life that I could stand to back away from quite a bit. Just like those itty-bitty sea creatures, I don’t want to get sucked into the wrong kind of atmosphere, the kind that will take the very life right out of me–again, over time. If my goal is to become a more beautiful creature with time, then I must draw nearer and nearer to the only source of true beauty I know; and that source is the Maker of all things beautiful, our God as personified in His Christ–in Jesus.
Leave a Reply