St. Brendan the Navigator

Little Salt.

He is simple.

He is a genius.

He is a simple genius.

He finds genius in the simple.

He is genius in the simple.

Simple geniuses are the best kind of geniuses, I humbly believe, because they hope their simple ingenuity will make the world better.

That’s all.

It’s not about them.

It’s about us.

All of us.

All things.

All.

Little Salt is curious about the universe, as most ten-year-old kids are.

But there’s one thing he is 'curiouser' (if you’ll allow me to make up a new word) about than anything else in the universe.

And that’s whales.

Why?

Whale, I mean well, he is a little, introspective, kind kid so his heart is drawn to whales, who are introspective and kind like him.

They are not, of course, little like him (unless you compare him to the vaquita porpoise, which is the world's smallest whale species at a little less than 5 feet long).

Nope, they’re big. 

They’re known collectively as cetaceans, which is a word that is formed from the Latin cetus (a large sea animal) and the Greek ketos (sea monster).

Yep, they’re large.

They’re monsters.

Did you know a blue whale can grow to be more than 110 feet long and weigh around 190 tons?

That’s bigger than a Boeing 737 airplane!

If you happen to see one in the open ocean when you’re in a small boat, you'll cry out, "Monster!" with a note of fear and wonder in your voice.

But they’re not monstrous.

In fact, they are exactly opposite of monstrous (extraordinarily vicious, according to Webster’s).

Did you know humpback whales will hold seals on their chests to protect them from predators?

Or that a narwhal will place the tip of it's long, hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to assuage the pain and stay beside it's hurting friend?

Nope, they’re not monstrous.

They’re simple geniuses.

Like Little Salt.

And this, I humbly believe, is why he loves whales.

When he was a little boy, and his mamí and abuelo fled with him from the chaos of civil war in El Salvador for the farms and fields of the American south, he wondered what it would be like to be friends with whales, to be protected by whales, to be in the non-violent  presence of whales, to rest in the shadow of the peace of whales.

As he grew into the life and work of an undocumented migrant worker in the United States of America, where you are always needed but most times unwanted, and he saw, heard and felt the small mindedness and hard heartedness of some (most?) people around him, he wondered if his heart could be as large as a blue whale's heart, which is the size of a Volkswagon Beetle, and forgive those people and find ways to help them become good humans.

Hmmm.

My name is Brendan.

Some call me Saint Brendan the Navigator, for I journeyed in a small boat from my home in Ireland to the east coast of what is now America in times long ago.

My journeys on the ocean in my little boat made me the patron saint of whales.

And the universe made me the patron saint of ten-year-olds.

And though I’m certainly not a saint because I’m perfect, I might just be one because I want to make the world better.

 

For whales.

For ten-year-old migrant workers from El Salvador.

For all of us.

For all things.

All.