Back to the Beach

They tell me that Carteret County is defined by water.

I first heard it last March, in the first few days I was ever IN Carteret County. I read it in a brochure I picked up at The History Place, and heard it said more than once. I saw it as I began to learn my way around the town – over bridges, around marshes, along creeks and rivers and inlets and sounds and the open ocean.

I often thought of the water that defines Carteret County through the dry months of a California spring and summer as my family and I sweated and sorted and packed and cleaned our house in preparation for moving here. I thought longingly of the water as we drove through the hot, dry Central Valley of California, though the searing heat of the Mojave desert near Barstow and Needles, through the sun-baked highlands in Arizona, and through New Mexico and Texas and Oklahoma. We saw our first rain in Missouri, after 5 days and 2000 miles on the road. It fell from the sky like a blessing.

And the idea – that not only Carteret County, but indeed life itself is defined by water – has come to life for me over the past few weeks, in this very sanctuary, as I have heard powerful and moving stories and songs about water, and how it shapes our lives in so many ways.

So I am tempted to wax poetic about water, and about the lands and the life that are defined by water. Rain falling from the sky like a blessing; beaches repeatedly wiped clean by waves and the cycle of the tides, the delicate beauty of shells, the miracle of gulls’ wings backlit by the sun and glowing like the wings of angels; truths found in the seen and the unseen, in the familiar and the exotic. Together you and I could spin parables, and challenge ourselves and one another to find and to apply to our lives multiple levels of symbol and meaning and lessons for living. That’s the sermon I began working on, and I spent several days preparing to write by reading – Rachel Naomi Remen’s thought-provoking stories, the poetry of Anne Morrow Lindberg’s A Gift from the Sea, and a dimly-remembered meditation on walking by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. A sermon began taking shape, about beaches remembered, beaches walked, and beaches reflected upon, and about how our perspective can change with time and experience and the lessons we learn from living.

And then it struck me: the irony of a sermon about beaches, woven from words and images and the writings of others. A sermon written in my study at home, and never touched by sand or water or the salty wind off the ocean.

A thoughtful sermon, grounded in collective human wisdom, but neatly distanced from actual experience, and intellectualized until what remained reminded me of the old joke about Unitarian Universalists: a people who, when presented with two pathways, one leading to "Heaven" and another to a "discussion about Heaven," nearly always choose the discussion.

Heaven help us!

I closed up my books and went to the beach.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, with clouds promising rain overhead, I visited the beach at Fort Macon. I got my feet wet and sandy. I walked a ways along the hard-packed sand nearest the water’s edge, and then I stopped and looked back, to see what kind of a trail my footprints made. I walked the tide-line, looking at the shells, picking up a few that seemed, somehow, special, carrying them along for a time, but in the end, putting them back on the sand. I listened for that still, small voice; for the words of wisdom that seemed to echo just below the threshold of hearing, drowned out by the wind blowing, blowing, blowing, off the water.

Like Bear at the beach, I went looking for something. Like Rachel Naomi Remen, I had a preconception of what I would find. I wanted an epiphany, and I wanted it to appear between lunch and dinner on a busy Saturday. Like both Bear and Dr. Remen, I was disappointed.

The beach was not there for me.

Not there…for me.

Just…there.

Like both Bear and Dr. Remen, as I came to terms with that truth, I found even more than I was looking for.

It took a while, but I was reminded how easily I fell into thinking that the world is there for me, filled with symbols and metaphors and parables for my edification. I was reminded how hard it is for me to remember that I am really only a very small part of a very large and complex system, an interdependent web of all existence which hums and throbs with life and death whether I am paying attention or not. Whether I am "in charge" or not.

It may be that as children, we are closer to this truth than we are as we grow older. It may be that society teaches us to separate ourselves from nature, from "the world;" and to objectify it. It may be that in our living we catch unexpected glimpses of underlying unity and connectedness, and that they fill us with surprise and wonder even as they resonate clear and true. It may be that spiritual practice can serve to open us up to these moments of grace, and enrich our living with reminders of wholeness and holiness.

Are children indeed wiser than adults in the ways of the universe? The Romantic poets and philosophers would have us think so, writing of youth still untouched by the corrupting influence of society, offering an example to adults jaded by living. And so would Rachel Naomi Remen, who begins her story with a brief excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In The-Wood-of-No-Names, fawns are not afraid of children, and human children present no danger to fawns. But at the edge of the wood, both fawn and Alice remember each other’s names, and the harmony of their walk together is completely erased. For the names, infused with expectations and preconceptions, tell them what they are "supposed" to be, and they find themselves powerless to resist.

The beach of her childhood is Dr. Remen’s Wood-of-No-Names, where seagulls are beautiful white birds with angel wings. Not knowing their names, the child saw them through eyes of wonder, and she loved them. Not knowing their names, she saw them through eyes of longing; her heart followed them into the sky and she, too, wanted wings to fly. Returning to the beach as an adult, she knew the names of those birds; her vision was "corrected," so to speak, by the lenses of preconception and expectation, and they were nothing more than raucously screaming sea gulls, "fighting over garbage and the occasional dead creature the sea had given up." (Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 71). A great disappointment to Dr. Remen, until she realized that it was not the beach but she, herself, who had changed. Best of all, she was able to grow "beyond labels and judgment" to see the world "with simple joy," as in this morning’s hymn. (#191, Now I Recall My Childhood).

Bear, too, begins in childlike happiness. But we watch him move from dreaming to longing, and then to the pain of "an empty place inside him he thought only a father could fill." (Clay Carmichael, Bear at the Beach, p. 13) Search as he might, he cannot find what he is looking for, for he wants "father" to be there for him. With the help of wise friends, however, Bear too, grows to see what has been there all the time. His is the experience of the adult in our hymn, discovering new meaning as he sees "life reborn in fresh surprise of love."

"a deep divide in contemporary consciousness between the human and the natural. We speak of ‘getting back to nature,’ or worse, ‘man against nature,’ as if it were something for us to conquer. This patriarchal attitude toward nature has indeed led to the destruction of countless forms of life and robbed many of the sense of belonging in the world. Like the birds, like the clouds, like the breeze, we are a part of nature. Indeed, we are made of the same stuff as the animals and the trees. The same energy that is alive in them is alive in us." (earth’s echo, p. 14)

Watching attentively may be an unorthodox form of prayer, but it is indeed a powerful spiritual practice, and it is closely akin to the Buddhist practice of "Mindfulness." To be mindful is to pay attention to the present moment – to "be here, now," and to know that you are not separate, not estranged, not outside looking in, not "in charge," but right where, right when, you belong. The great and gentle Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh observes that "we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive." He suggests that we begin to cultivate Mindfulness by practicing conscious breathing, because "our breathing is the link between our body and our mind. Sometimes our mind is thinking of one thing and our body is doing another, and mind and body are not unified. By concentrating on our breathing, "In" and "Out," we bring body and mind back together, and become whole again." (Peace is Every Step, pp 5, 9)