Finding Balance in Nature's Quiet Lessons

Experience the serene wisdom of nature's quiet resilience this Advent season. Have you ever pondered how a lake trout thrives in the icy depths of winter? Join us as we uncover the secrets of this remarkable fish, whose ability to adapt and find peace amidst chaos is nothing short of inspiring. Our journey takes us to the northern shores of Lake Michigan, where these resilient creatures navigate tumultuous waters with grace. Discover how their story offers a profound metaphor for finding balance and tranquility in our own lives, especially during the bustling holiday season.

As we continue our Advent exploration with insights from "All Creation Waits," we reflect on the lessons offered by the natural world. Our narrative today not only highlights the lake trout's flexibility in her dietary choices but also her capacity to embrace the season's challenges with ease. This episode invites you to pause and find moments of stillness and gratitude, drawing parallels between the lake trout's adaptability and your journey through Advent. Let the tranquil wisdom of nature guide you in cultivating a more intentional rhythm, as we celebrate life's quieter joys together.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. This is a podcast about setting an intentional rhythm and savoring life's blessings. We are learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God, and if you want to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life, there is going to be a lot here that you will love, and if you'd like to be creative and fun, you can find your place here as well. In this place, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate everyday joys and remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. So I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 104. So we're continuing through our Advent content and what we're doing this year for Advent. In our world, in our society, advent gets pretty loud. It's supposed to be a time of waiting quietly in expectation, but the way we distract ourselves during that process is a lot of shopping and a lot of noise and holiday music and parties and all sorts of fun things, and those things are not bad. But as a way of centering ourselves, we are taking a page from nature. We're looking to nature, which is more quiet and dormant during this time of year, and we're using a book called All Creation Waits, and this book is filled with stories about wildlife, creatures that quiet themselves and do different actions during the darker time of the year. So we've been through the story of the honeybee, of the chipmunk, of the red fox and of the northern cardinal, and today is our last story in our Advent content, and it is the Lake Trout. So we are going to hear a story about the Lake Trout. While you're listening, I want you to use this as a centering moment and just try to pay attention to what jumps out at you, what you can take away from this story to apply to your life and maybe center your mind a little bit more through this Advent season. So here is our story about the Lake Trout.

Speaker 1: 2:10

800 feet out on a pier in northern lake, michigan, I wince against the sleet and spray stinging my face. It's the place I first called home. Still, the sturgeon gray tonnage bashing headlong against the breakwater, against the long suffering shore, rattles me to the bone. Somewhere below the uproar glides a silver fish, speckled in ivory. She welcomes the tumultuous waves and the cold. Tumult and cold mix more oxygen into the water and cold, oxygen-rich water brought lake trout here in the wake of receding glaciers. Rich breathing is better to her than any particular food, though. She will swim the 300-mile length of this great lake looking for small fish that she prefers, and if she doesn't find enough of them, she'll simply switch to tiny shrimp or insects, and if these go missing, she'll choose to be a vegetarian, consenting thereby to grow more slowly.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Darwin and other scientists since have thought her species to be perhaps the most flexible, most adaptive vertebrae on earth. Now, in early winter, she's at her ease. In other seasons, she will sometimes follow small fish into water warmer than her internal organs like, choosing to bear this stress for the sake of the food that satisfies her best. Or she may spare herself the stress and eat less nutritious fare. Always, she's aware of the trade-off and of having to choose, but in winter, the warmer water which the small fish follow is not much more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature just right for her body, body Bathed in comfort with ample food. Besides, she can relax. She relaxes alone.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Seven or eight weeks ago she lived her communal life. It lasted a few days. In late fall, when she felt the water cool. An irrepressible urge rose in her, and lake trout everywhere to return to their first homes, and lake trout everywhere to return to their first homes, the beds where they were hatched. Half of the hatching beds in Lake Michigan are straight out from this pier.

Speaker 1: 4:39

It's not a temperature or depth or clarity that makes these waters so hospitable, a first home. It's not the food supply. It's the rocks, limestone cobbles the size of doorknobs and soup bowls, heaped six or more feet thick, some on shoals, some at the bottom of deep trenches. From all the ends of the lake. The fish massed here, though the night, males and females swarm over the great rock piles where they had first come awake, silver sides pressed together.

Speaker 1: 5:15

When females swam away and resumed their solitary lake wandering, she left behind thousands of fertile eggs, fallen from her body into the crevices between the cobbles. It's a kind of faith. This shining fish practices returning, perhaps from vast distance, to plant life in the place where she came to life. It's faith in the goodness of the rocks, their sheltering crannies, their cold water cradles. She tucked her eggs there, away from predators, away from churning currents, away from predators, away from churning currents. Then she left. She's done all she can do. Vital but dormant, the eggs wait, as she once waited, until winter ends. It's what they must do to wake, and that's our nature story for today, and that's the last of our Advent content. We're going to take a couple of weeks off to get to my own list and center my own self and do my own things during this holiday season, be with my family. So we'll be back at the beginning of the new year with some new and exciting content to refresh your life and refocus you on peace and joy. And until next time, peace, thank you.