The Cove

I am a little late to the game on The Cove. I have been wanting to watch it for the past year, kept hearing interviews with Ric O'Barry, and seeing clips. I cannot watch these types of movies with my wife, who converted me to vegetarianism, because she cannot handle imagining cruelty to animals, let alone witness documentation of it.

Aside from the ethic of eating meat, the movie hit me on a much larger scale. At the very end, I found myself struggling to catch my breath. It was not fighting back tears the way a movie generally strikes our heart strings, but an overwhelming paradox of repentance and gratitude. My immediate reaction was an understanding that we are so capable of sin, so deeply deranged and we have a collective part in the human condition. I am appalled by people who could be so disturbed as to torture animals, but on a greater level, even though I do not eat meat, let alone dolphin meat, I am blind too some sin in my life, just like these Japanese men.

At the same time, I cannot deny a creator made dolphins. When I lived in San Diego, I remember surfing (or at least paddling) next to them. It is as spiritual as anyone has described, not just a romanticized delusion of naturalists. Additionally, I cannot believe we receive grace. Ric O'Barry is the greatest witness of repentance I have ever seen. There is no hint of self-depreciation or denial in him, simple recompense.

When the 9/11 attacks occurred I had been a Christian for almost 3 months. I was in Colorado, far removed. Even in that distance, a strange sense of realignment happened to many people, just by watching TV and reexamining humanity. I cried a lot, sort of inexplicably. I think my emotions for the complexity of life were unsettled from delusion because of the attacks and the feeling was liberating, but also degrading. The end of The Cove is the only time since then when I have felt the same emotions. I highly recommend you see it.