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Being ShapedBy Bruce Saunders 2/26/2006A few days at the beach, a short time away from the usual distractions and obligations - taking the time to see the Book of Creation alive all around us. Seeing the differences revealed as light and shadow move watching waves catch the sunlight and reflect infinite points of light. The dawn and the evening bring the most dramatic and fast paced changes in the light there is such substance, body and glow then. At mid-day, the light pales becomes much less beautiful, but is none-the-less essential for sustaining growth. A metaphor for the seasons of life? Time spent feeling the wind, watching the waves, and seeing the sands shift in response to both. Ghostly rivers of dry sand blowing across the wet beach . The marks of high tide and storm, the remnants of great power and might slowly being erased by the wind and water. Much slower and less dramatic than a winter storm, but still bringing relentless change. Moving through Assateague Island, seeing the deer, wild horses and gulls in the places we explore. They are here for the moment and then gone upon our return, replaced by others in different places. A beautiful vignette of a swan on the water, glimpsed through a tunnel of brush, and vanished by the time we could get the camera out. A fleeting opportunity seen and now lost, but the image remains captured in my mind more meaningfully than the digital image ever could be. The striking contrasts of the natural shapes always in transition and the man-made structures reflecting our futile attempts to master the environment and keep things stable worn wooden structures, faded blacktop roads swept by sand, snow-fence mostly buried in the dunes. Walking with Teresa in the pine forest and discovering a freshwater pond. A sign and pictures from the past show us that it was formed forty-four years ago when a hurricane swept a house off its foundation and spun it about in the sand. A few timbers remain submerged in this oasis of fresh water so violently and quickly created, and now sheltered in a quiet temple of pines younger than we are. A little island of fresh water surrounded by a sea of saw grass, saltwater marsh, sand and finally, the greater sea that lies beyond. Life now thrives in this little pond life that never could have found a foothold if that earlier storm had not brought change. This is a place of transformation from sea, to empty beach, to house, to home, to place of lost dreams, and now a host to new life. A place continuing to be changed by the passage of time and events. Life in that spot is much different from what it was, and only God knows what it will be in the future. Everywhere we look there is evidence of seasons and times past and glimpses of new seasons just beginning. Old, dry and brown weeds that were once new and green. The loblolly pines reflect a tired, dusky gray-green now in the winter light. A few new fragile and tentative vines are beginning to grow on wood that looks dead but is not. And in Ocean City places boarded up for the season desolate and worn - each was once a new hope and dream. Now they too are faded by time and events but this year, someone may buy that old place, and once again new dreams will spring into life, and be cherished and invested in. Out of what was once there and is now faded, new dreams, visions and life will take hold. Seeing, hearing, and even feeling powerful gray/black waves dash upon the breakwater In an instant each one is thrust up from the solid sea in power and fury, violently moved from heaving, massive, slow horizontal movement to a burst of the vertical a fountain stream of foamy white quickly changed to mere mists in the sky, disappearing into nothingness as they are carried away in the wind an endless cycle. Watching the waters cascade through the inlet first rushing in, and then later when the tide turns, pouring out. Coming, going, flowing strongly at times, but at the changing of the tide, for a moment at least, relatively calm as the competing forces are balanced. All the power concentrated and channeled for a rush between the breakwaters intense and raging compared to the broad sea and the comparative calm of the sheltered inner sound. All three are connected, and made of the same stuff, but have widely different appearance and characteristics. Everything changes as it is shaped by the things which surround it. Swooping, swirling, screeching, always-hungry gulls flying the air rushes by them, and they turn and wheel in the sky but in spite of all their effort, they often remain relatively motionless in one place. Then, they bank slightly, and slide off quickly on the wings of the wind no longer fighting against its power, but harnessing its energy to move them to the next place. And finally, at the end of the day, ducks settling into the shelter of the inlet as the winds die down a little. The skies and clouds glow a rich yellow-red with the setting sun. Night begins to cover all, and then, so many little points of light some natural, most man-made - and the whistling of the wind, still roaming, still at work, bringing changes which I cannot yet see. Recognizing the wind is a physical metaphor for the infinitely more powerful Spirit unseen yet constant, perceived at differing strengths, and always bringing change at times gently and at times violently, but somehow, marvelously, that power dwells and moves within us too, shaping change. Today I have realized deeply, in a manner more driven by images than words and in a way I could not just intellectually invent, that the Book of Creation speaks of constant change. Today too has been a day of change. Change has so many dimensions time, form, and being. Change occurs everywhere and at all times it is external, internal and eternal. It is all around us, but at the same time is no less deep, dramatic and constant within us. Each of us is being shaped by the hand of our Creator and by our responses to the people, events, and environments he has created for us individually. In this season of change I am finding some peace, some lasting truth, and at times even wrestling with a little sorrow for my own life as I look into the Book of Creation, recognizing that I too am being shaped by the seasons of my life. At the same time, there is the quiet joy, strength, thankfulness and hope for what has passed and how it will shape my future. The past has gone and has left its mark, and I see that the new day is coming too and will change me yet more. To hold onto things as I have thought them to be, and to fight to keep things always the same would keep me from seeing what is not yet, and ultimately, would be a tragic waste, costing so much more in lost opportunities for transformation than it could ever be worth to stay in the same safe place. Change continues eternal and unstoppable. Better to embrace the shaping, and to marvel at what each new days light will reveal. |
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