Finding clarity and the imperative for the lost to be found
My family took me to the beach last week, the same beach where I used to play as a boy near seven decades ago. I pretended to be unfazed by all their ministration, their fussing over me as if I was a baby about to be given its first bath. First, they anointed me with sunblock lotion, SPF 80; then they outfitted me like I was one about to join a marathon – long sleeved sweatshirt on top of my tee shirt, jogging pants on top of my swimming trunks, flat light sport shoes, and a Panama hat to boot. I looked every inch the diver out on an expedition to retrieve a sunken treasure ship from the deep!
After I surrendered to their needless bustling, I slowly wobbled my way down to the water, assuring them I’d not go very far or deep, that I’d just be wading and wetting my feet. I gradually made my way toward the far hidden end of the cove, where the boulders were.
Freed from the watchful eyes of kith and kin, I began to divest myself of the trappings of their well-meaning but misplaced affection, chucking off onto the hot rocks, one after the other. First, the shoes that would not let me feel the soothing caress of the cold wet sand underfoot, the purling of cool mud in between my toes.
Next to come off were my cumbersome outfit, heavy as a knight’s armor now that it’s wet, and last to go was the silly hat. So then I was in the water only in my T-shirt and swimming trunks. The sun felt good as it warmed the tonsure on my head; it felt even better to be light, to be without the things that weighed me down.
How really good it felt to be free from the encumbrances of living! Having left the city of sin, my garden of thorns, my house of pain, all that botheration, I skinny-dipped half the livelong day to my heart’s content, venturing to go deeper and deeper into the sea of my childhood, farther and farther into the warm embrace of the past remembered.
For a long time, I was alone by myself, with only my thoughts, my reminiscences, for company. I am a river, a long river with a long memory. All that I was, all that I’ve done in my life, are the tributaries that formed my river, the tracks of my tears. With my flow now almost coming to its end, my currents starting to wane and weaken, I’ve come to the beginning of a realization, an epiphany.
The castles I built, my name I wrote on the sand, my footprints, the tide took them all away, just like that. The sea before me is to be the end of all that this river ever was. The sea is my mother and my maker. The sea is God, my Creator, and I come before it shorn of all that burdened, hindered and pulled me down all my life, my material possessions, my worldly concerns. I will come to face
God the way I came into this world, with nothing but my body and myself.
Who am I? What have I done? Have I shared or given enough, cared enough and loved enough? I am so, so riven with doubts!
Three things I used to want to be: a fish, cleaving a path through the water as smoothly as a katana cutting butter, bereft of the baubles, bangles, and vulgar Bulgaris that weigh us mortals down; a bird, shooting the rapids in that atmospheric river in the sky; and a good man, molded and crafted in the similitude and simulacrum of God Himself. The first two wishes were conceits and deceits of my mind when I was young and consequently foolish.
I was jealous of the freedom enjoyed by fish in the water and birds in the air. Now that I’m old, I know exactly what I want to be. To simply be a man, king neither of air nor water.
This river ain’t done yet. While I still seep and ooze, I will aspire to spend the last drop of me for the purpose for which I was created. After all, what have I, at 73, got to lose that I haven’t already lost? Whatever the question is, God is the answer.
I may have earlier lost my mind, but I have at last found my clarity. I want to return to see the sea again, the sea that will not drown me but wash me and clean me and save me. When there is nothing more of me to lose, I hope to find God.
Even more fervently so, I hope God finds me.
