'PUT FACE CLOSE'

BY BOB CLARK

FEELING CLOSE TO GOD is a great gift, and brings great freedom. It's natural and powerful to feel a divine Father-Mother loving and guiding you in a crisis, and such a feeling results in healing. I've come to think of this kind of connection as my "put face close to God" prayer.

The term "put face close" is what those who study dolphin behavior call an ethogram. It describes the way a baby dolphin swims with its face close to its mother, in order to learn survival skills.

My wife and I love living by the sea and have often had opportunities to observe the sea's inhabitants, including wild dolphins. We've found the sight of a mother and baby dolphin swimming together and exhibiting "put face close" behavior both heartwarming and thought-provoking.

We also have enjoyed volunteering at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium here in Florida, which rescues, rehabilitates, and releases dolphins, turtles, otters, pelicans, and even whales. Last year, a baby female dolphin was rescued. Only three months old, she was badly dehydrated after becoming entangled in a crab pot line. Since she was without her mother, we were called, along with other volunteers, to man round-the-clock shifts to feed, care for, and love this adorable little dolphin. The aquarium staff named her "Winter," for the season of her rescue. We've come to realize that our interactions with Winter over the next six months clarified our thinking about the closeness and motherhood of God.

Our schedules often allowed us to care for Winter at very quiet times. On several occasions, we were with her during the 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift. We liked this because of the stillness—just the sound of Winter's breathing. It also gave us the chance to talk to her.

We talked about her spiritual wholeness and oneness with her divine Creator. We told her about her unlimited ability to be what her Father-Mother God created her to be, regardless of challenges to her physical wholeness. We began to realize that these "put face close" moments were really about understanding our own sense of Mother-love. Our time with Winter forced us to put our own faces close to God and try harder to see Winter as God sees her. This kind of prayer in action helped free us from any sense of pity or fear about her physical condition.

Winter began to respond to everyone's mothering care. The veterinarian was pleased that she recuperated quickly from the trauma of having lost her flukes (tail) and being separated from her mother. Despite the medical fears and predictions, she began to eat and swim more normally. Playing tag with her and feeding her fish milkshakes from a two-liter baby bottle were our human ways of mothering her during her recuperation. Although she was a fussy eater and would always rather play than eat, she would eventually cooperate, take her bottle, and then play.

We continued to pray for Winter even when we weren't with her, and felt certain that other volunteers and local community members of various faiths also were praying for her full recovery. Members of our local Christian Science church offered prayerful insights during our weekly testimony meetings and at other times, and were kept up to date on her progress. We began to trust the fact that her Creator (and ours) is in a perpetual "put face close" posture with all of His creation. It's actually feeling and trusting this closeness to God that bring healing and freedom.

As the months passed, Winter was weaned from her fish milkshakes and could interact normally with the adult dolphins, even without a tail to propel her. This impressed some of the animal behaviorists, who loved her but also worried that she might not develop normally, since she has had to learn to swim by moving her body back and forth more like a shark or alligator. Not having a tail like the other dolphins didn't seem to bother Winter. She learned to use her pectoral fins in amazing new ways to steer and propel herself, and was almost always playful and joyful. When she wasn't, we would do our best to trust God, her divine Mother, to remind Winter that She had never left her side.

One of Winter's accomplishments was to have her remarkable story told on the Today show. She has also become something of a celebrity at the aquarium. A local newspaper article described her as "happy-go-lucky" as her tank was being upgraded. What we're most grateful for is the lesson our time with Winter taught us about drawing closer to God. |css

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