成人快手

I met a jellyfish the other day. I don't know its name. I don't speak jellyfish, or even know if they have a language.聽And to be honest it wasn't up for conversation. It was dead.
Lying there at low tide on the sandy beach in the west of Wales,聽looking dangerous and intimidating, as big as a dustbin lid and with long tentacles. I had to stop Mabel the dog from getting too close, in case she was stung. This jellyfish was scary. It was alien. I didn't understand it, so I was afraid.聽

I remembered St Francis, the Italian saint who called all living creatures sister or brother, because they shared the same beginning as us. They were part of what others have called the great chain of being, that runs from God to humans to animals, plants, water and the Earth itself.聽We're all part of the same thing. Like the bees we're all trying to save, Zoe.
Which is great and everything,聽but still a bit hard to get your head around when you're confronted with a huge, scary alien thing that looks deadly poisonous.

And as luck would have it,聽the next day I swam straight into a relative of theirs.聽Kind of slapped them on the jelly dome.聽I freaked out. Because you can't slap a jellyfish and get away with it, can you? I braced myself for the pain. But nothing came. And as I realised with elation that I felt okay,聽I also began to notice the beauty.聽Pulsing its body to get along, with those tentacles trailing and glowing soft pinks and purples, it was gorgeous. In the sea, where it belonged, this creature made sense.

I called for my daughter Grace, who was scared but fascinated. We were careful to keep a safe distance,聽but stood there and watched it swim by, between us. I found out later that this particular big, scary alien thing was harmless, although we certainly didn't know that at the time. And it actually gave me a blessing, my brother or sister jellyfish: a deep and sudden sense of connection. Father and daughter in the water, taken by surprise,聽meeting a creature we would never normally see:聽the three of us, caught up together in the great chain of being.