Beauty Break


Two beautifully filmed videos. Just take some time out, enjoy and thank God for.


 To see a world in a grain of sand.
And heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy:
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

 William Blake.
 (Fragments from "Auguries of Innocence"
 Complete poem here






The scenes in the second video are from the 'The Cove; a 2009 American documentary film that describes the annual killing of dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama, in Japan from an anti--dolphin-hunting campaigner's point of view,

About the rings the dolphins make:

As if by magic, the dolphin does a quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped  bubble about 2-ft across, yet it doesn't rise to the surface of the water. It stands upright in the water like a magic doorway to an unseen dimension. 

The dolphin then pulls a small silver donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last time, a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward towards the water's surface. 

After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with. There also seems to be a separate mechanism for producing small rings, which a dolphin can accomplish by a quick flip of its head.

And for those interested in the scienctific explanation of how dolphins make these silver rings:they are "air-core vortex rings". Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a few seconds of play time.

Related articles : These beautiful animals need our protection and these articles relate to protests that took place this weekend.

 
And then I ponder alongside of all this 
 
On the Mystery of the Incarnation


It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word. 

Denise Levertov

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