July 7, 2024

2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

I like honu (green sea turtles). How about you? It’s just so comforting to me watching those sea turtles raise their flippers to the surface to breathe and look around, and then taking them down to snack on the seaweed, then turning themselves about like the most agile of dancers, then hauling themselves out on the shore to get a good solid nap in the sun.

I like honu.

It’s hard to believe that one could be a bully, but I’m afraid this story is about a honu who did become a bully. He’d shove smaller turtles out of his way as he grazed on seaweed. He knocked shells with honu who were in the spot he wanted to sunbathe in. Actually, he’d knock shells with a honu just to get it to move, then he’d nap somewhere else. He slapped other turtles with his flippers, he nipped them with his mouth, he’d slide over them when they surfaced to breathe, he… well.

He was a bully.

I’m sorry to say that, mostly, it worked for him. He didn’t have a lot of friends, and I guess part of the reason he was mean was that he didn’t have a lot of friends. But he ate a lot, and he got comfortable spots on the beach, and other honu didn’t pick on him, no they didn’t. So, as I say, it mostly worked for him.

Until, one day, he decided to bully the ocean.

The winds were strong and the surf was high that day. Rain lashed down from overhead so that even a honu found it difficult to tell where the sea top ended and the air began. Spray flew in sheets. Wavetops tossed careless fish into the air.

And this honu decided to go nap on the beach. I don’t think he expected to find sunshine there, but when somebody expects to get things his way all the time, who knows?

The problem was that the waves at the surface tossed him about, and when he dove down, the currents underwater dragged him back to sea. He was trying to get to one specific part of the beach, but the wind carried him along past where he wanted to go, and when he tried to swim back against it, he couldn’t – at least not from where he was. He lashed his flippers at the water both at the surface and deeper down, and in neither place could he make much headway.

Eventually he let the underwater current carry him back out to sea, where he surfaced and howled in rage – which is very rare for a honu – at the winds and the surf.

An older honu drifted by and said, “What’s the matter, youngling?”

He wasn’t that young, but she was a lot older (and bigger), so he didn’t quite yell back when he said, “The stupid wind and waves won’t get me where I want to go!”

“Watch the youngling there,” said the older honu, and he did. A younger, smaller turtle, one that he’d bullied any number of times, had positioned himself in a place where the combination of wind, waves, and current would carry him toward the beach. He made just the smallest of adjustments with his flippers as the water bore him along. Just at the beach, he dipped down to slow himself in the current going back and to avoid being thrown onto the shore from the top of a wave. Then he slid onto the shore, and slowly moved up on his now-active flippers.

“You can’t bully the sea, youngling,” said the older honu. “You shouldn’t bully anything, but especially not the ocean, which won’t notice you at all.”

It took him a long time to learn that lesson deeply, I’m afraid, and he spent a number of storms tossing about in the surf. Eventually, though, he learned that sometimes you don’t fight, you follow. And when he did, he fought less with other honu, and a bully learned to do better.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

Due to a technical error, the story was not recorded this week.

Photo of a honu (who showed no signs of being a bully) by Eric Anderson.