The Whale Chooses You
Whales, Walks, and Spiritual Dividends
Hello Everyone,
Time stopped for me this weekend.
I was walking the seawall between Ambleside and Dundarave, one of my favourite strolls in Vancouver, and noticed something peculiar. The walkers had stopped, faces turned towards the water, and telephoto lenses appeared out of thin air. Whispers of excitement and gasps of delight rippled across the seawall. In the close distance, distortions in the water, a sleek reflective sheen and a tell-tale spout of water indicated we were all in the presence of a greater being. A grey whale.
It was on the surface quite ridiculous. It was, in the words of a friend and mentor who I had happened to bump into, just a whale. But as we stopped and watched, we looked back to each other and admitted, it was quite spectacular.
Where else in the world could one look at snow-capped mountains in the distance, see the last rays of sun dance across the waves, walk along the water, and glimpse a whale.
I texted my dad, “We saw a whale in Ambleside!”
His response, “God’s country.”
God’s country indeed, and the whale was spectacular, but what made it so? The philosopher William James in his work The Varieties of Religious Experience, offers some criteria for what makes an experience a mystical one.
There was no other sight like it, the whale had singularly captured the attention of hundreds along the seawall. Children gasped and yelped with delight looking to their parents, eyes wide with excitement. Seniors paused, couples hand in hand, stood closer together as they looked out to the water. Even those professional walkers, for whom walking was serious business, not pleasure, couldn’t help glancing to the waters, captivated, but at the same time, not quite willing to let anyone else know that they too had been seduced by this giant’s appearance.
A mystical experience according to James, is ineffable, that is, it defies true description, “no one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists.” As clearly as I try to convey to you how it felt to see a whale off the coast of Ambleside at sunset, I will never capture the true essence of that experience – you had to be there.
The second is that such experiences are profound. They carry the seeds of a deeper meaning. The feeling of awe, of being in the presence of something otherworldly, of something spectacular. As James describes, such experiences are, “illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule, they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.”
When I think back, I am not yet sure of the significance the grey whale carried for me, but it lies there within me, a seed of significance which I am still unable to express. Maybe it was the appearance of the whale, maybe it was how the sun’s evening rays filtered through the clouds, shining only on the waters in which the whale was swimming. Maybe it was the eerie silence that had descended onto the seawall, the only noise the soft lapping of waves and the distant sound of the soft spray of the whale’s breath. There was in all of this profound meaning I am sure, signs only for those who know.
The third quality of a mystical experience is its transience. These experiences do not last long they are short in duration, “except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two.” We stood there for only a few minutes, watching the whale as it reappeared, never to know if it would be the last, nor if this would ever happen again in our lifetime. We knew that if it ever did, it would be a special occasion. To this day, I can remember each and every single one of the three times I have ever seen a whale in the wild.
The last quality is that of passivity, or as James describes, “the subject of the experience is passive, unable to control the arrival and departure of the experience yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.” This is exactly how I felt. Time stood still and nothing else mattered. I did not choose when, how or at what time the whale appeared, it was as if the whale had chosen us. We were in its presence; it was not in ours.
If I look back and use James’ criteria, seeing that grey whale in the waters of Burrard Inlet was indeed a mystical experience.
But the question that still haunts me is, do we live our lives in a way that lends itself to a receptivity of reverence and mystical experiences?
I am not sure. We live busy lives - of distraction not purpose, where we we value others not for their minds, hearts or contribution but for their attention. Where truth has been abandoned, where values and ethics are now choices rather than convictions. Where relationships are transactional. Where the divine is abandoned. Where the humane has been removed from humanity.
Where global conflict is rising, economic uncertainty is high, and we stand at the cusp of one of the biggest technological changes in human history, the consequences of which most of us have yet to even comprehend. As the New York Times described this week:
“Thus under digital conditions social life attenuates, romance declines, institutions lose support, the fine arts fade and the popular arts are overrun with slop, and the basic skills and habits that our civilization took for granted — how to have an extended conversation, how to approach a woman or man with romantic interest, how to sit undistracted with a movie or a book — are transmitted only weakly to the next generation. Then, finally, as local embodied experience becomes less important than virtual alternatives, the power of substitution and distraction feeds a sense that real-world life is fundamentally obsolete.
Where the existential threat of global warming continues unabated and still we fight, kill and maim each other. We point blame and accuse. Where hands of cooperation are always spoken of, but never extended. Where public systems, healthcare, housing and education are collapsing and expressions of democracy eviscerated before our very eyes.
Perhaps it is in this darkness, in these moments of hope and despair that we reach out for meaning, and find them in the slices of life that present themselves to us. For in the words of Canadian philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, “Our need to respond to a further reality than meets the eye and to grope our way towards it, tends to be shouldered out the busy day, to make its force felt in the tranquility of darkness, in the solitude of loneliness, in the shattering upheavals of personal or social disaster.”
Thank you for reading,
FK
Recommended Read(s):
I was on a bit of a shopping spree this weekend and bought a few books, I haven’t read them yet, but am sharing them with you.
FK’s Recommendation:
I have been reading and re-reading this book and could not recommend it more!
The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, by Astra Taylor
FK’s Future Reads (Summer 2025)
In the Court of Three Popes by Mary Ann Glendon (Thank you, K, for the suggestion!)
Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis by Gregor Craigie
The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life by Lowry Pressly
Beautifully written and what a simple yet breathtaking experience you described!
Wow!