Years ago, I opened a sermon with this illustration: Three guys have been stranded on a desert island for a very long time when one of them finds a magic lantern containing a genie. The genie grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home─and poof!, he is back home. The second guy wishes the same thing─and poof!, he is gone too. The third guy says, “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here with me.”
It is really important to keep our wits about us when we are making our wishes, isn’t it….
One of the things about wishing is that it can come as a result of not being present with or appreciative of what currently is. I have been very aware of that the past few weeks as we were preparing to leave Pine Island and come home to Michigan, especially given that the home we had been wintering in for the past three years would no longer be available to us next season.
As a child, feeling homesick was a very common emotion, and I can bump into that feeling even as an adult, so I made a conscious choice to do my best to stay present. I wanted to neither feel grief about letting go of a space that had been very nurturing to me, nor to long for another place that is filled with people that I love.
Wrapping my days with this intention, I organized my departure well enough to enjoy nature visits with Nancy, a friend I share both Michigan and Florida with. Nature seemed to respond to my intention in spades!
Visiting one of the nearby eagle nests, Nancy and I were treated to soaring eagle chick, not once, but twice! And the day before my departure, she and I had the most amazing dolphin sighting.
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Our encounter was so prolonged, and unusual even in a setting where dolphins are common, I looked up the symbolic meaning of dolphin. Please honor the author by checking out the link for yourself, and enjoy this wonderful summary:
Christian symbolism conveys the dolphin as an aspect of Christ. Dolphins seen in Christian art are symbolic of resurrection. Some artists utilize the protective, stabilizing, compassionate demeanor of the dolphin as a message of wellbeing to the pure of heart.
Some artistic renditions speak of dolphins transporting the spirits of the faithful to Christ’s side upon leaving their physical bodies.This dolphin meaning is mimicked in ancient Greece where legend tells us the dolphin was responsible for carrying the souls of the dead to the Islands of the Blessed.
- Playfulness
- Transcendence
- Gentleness
- Harmony
- Intelligence
- Contentment
- Friendship
- Community
- Resurrection
- Generosity
- Power
The following evening, as we had left Florida and were heading north, we walked to a small restaurant near the hotel we were staying for the night. As I walked the short block, I was having cellular memory of other times and places I had walked to dinner. It was so clear that dolphin meaning was working:
This is a key understanding because the dolphin meaning is connected with themes of duality. It has to do with the dolphin being both fish and mammal. It is both of the water, and an air breather. Ergo, dolphin symbolism talks to us about “being in two worlds at once.”
As I bid farewell to Florida and hello to Michigan via some delicious days with Stacey and Doug and Brad and Christina and Adam and Courtney in Tennessee, I say thank you to two worlds. There is great love for all!
