Weathered wood, as white as the sand.
Wild-wet air whipping cotton and skin.
Sun light licking mornings mist
Sea pounds and sounds roll through me.
Compass
I spent a lot of time on boats when I was younger. I remember that scary sinking feeling when we were far from shore and there were no visual landmarks left to get our bearings.
After a full days fishing out in the deep, we would start heading into port and soon begin to argue over the direction. What seemed intuitively to be the way home could be all wrong. I always tried to get back without compass, to feel my way, to show my knowledge of the sea. To have to totally depend on that little compass was unnerving, and humbling, but it was the only safe way home. We would huddle around the center console gripping its rails, riding up and down the swells, staring only at the Compass and adjusting wheel to its line. To look up and beyond was disorienting until the shore was in sight.
Many folks today
say they are spiritual but not religious. They look upon any creed, scripture, or church authority as self limiting, judgmental, and even toxic. The preeminent virtues of the post-modern age are openness, tolerance and inclusion. perhaps these are in vogue for good reason, to counter past abuses, but has this pendulum swung to far ? Are we setting ourselves adrift in a sea of acceptance with no north star?
We can’t stay close to shore if we are going to experience the fullness of life. We have to go out into the deep and we need the humility to bring a compass along. There is a natural sense in us for what is right, but even the conscience needs a reference point, a community, a map and some instruments to rely upon in the fog and the deep.
The River
Trillions of transparent trinities,
arise from the deep and wash over me.
Rapids wrestle over rock and rim,
as I try to hold it back, and harness it in.
But I am powerless, pushed down, drown,
baptized in a billion bonds, broken open and set free.
Like a vein in flesh, I am life in land,
giving rise to fern and flower, on bank and bend.
My rocks are slowly ground down, smooth and round,
as time takes from me what I what I thought I was supposed to be.
I have learned to love what is being made of me,
accepting my role, not as source or goal.
I am a journey made of land, cut away, growing deeper,
and still, with less of me holding more thee.
As I descend down into the plain, others flow into me,
and I in thee, as we grow closer to the sea.
My broken parts flow back down together,
embraced in a fertile bed, where new bonds are born.
There is no form left of me, no resistance to thee,
for I am now one with the sea.