“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” – James 5:13
No whale watching today? Well, vacation ruined.
That was my immediate and pessimistic reaction to what the man in the seaside booth said. “It’s too foggy for us to take the boat out today. We wouldn’t see any whales anyway. But come back tomorrow!”
‘No, we can’t come back tomorrow,’ I thought. Today’s our last full day in Maine.’
My family had traveled to the coastal town of Boothbay Harbor, looking forward to getting out on the Atlantic and getting up-close to those majestic mammals. The people in the brochures looked like they were having the time of their lives!
Now, of all things, the weather was going to ruin our brochure moment. It’s hard to remember the ‘serenity prayer’ when the disappointment is brand new. What now?
We drove a few miles to a place called Pemaquid Point, which has a classic lighthouse towering over cliffs that nature turned into an auditorium. The different layers of rock stagger toward the water, creating plenty of seating. My mom and I found a couple of seats together and stared out toward the sea.
But what was there to see today? Fog. Only a handful of other people were there. Sure, there was the sound of waves crashing, the relaxing scent of saltwater, the hovering seagulls looking for bread handouts… but we could only see a few hundred feet of the ocean before it dissolved into a gray mist. Sigh.
Then came the sweetest sound, slowly cutting through the gloom. Is that… bagpipes?
We looked to our right, and down near the last stretch of the peninsula was a hazy figure of a man facing the water, bagpipes in hand. He was alone. He wasn’t playing for anyone, at least no one we could see.
The song developed slowly, and then it put everything in perspective. He was playing Amazing Grace. There’s no greater instrument to convey the soul-touching beauty of that song. Talk about serenity.
We looked back toward the ocean, and there it was. Halfway through the fog… a whale. It looked like a humpback, arching out of the water for a few precious seconds. My mom and I gasped simultaneously, pointing in the same direction. We saw a whale after all.
To this day, I get goosebumps when I hear bagpipes. I thank God for the weather that day. If it weren’t for the fog, we would have missed that man’s performance, that whale, that cherished memory. We would have missed Amazing Grace. Music changed our outlook and, in that moment, our world. How sweet the sound.
Ed Doney, Staff Writer
