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Wind and Sand
As I sit on the edge of our dorm house facing the open desert, and close my eyes, the wind storm sounds like I’m at the edge of a beach with the great ocean slapping the earth. I feel the wind rushing over me and hear the waves crashing on the sand and crackling back into the immense bluewhitegray body of the earth's lover. I listen for seagulls. Although I am immersed in all beach sand and no water, it still reminds me of the sandcastles we all build in our lives. Almost instinctively, I utter aloud the prayer: “Lord, I accept your grace to embrace the waves and wind that crash over and sweep away the sandcastles of my life.” The sandcastles are those self-created illusions in our hearts into which we are deluded into thinking we can actually fit and live. Rationally, we know it’s a ridiculous proposition to attempt to live in a sandcastle, but we readily and daily attempt to live in the regrets of the past, our bitter disappointments that we hide from others, and our frustrations that come from failed life expectations. The waves of reality are always punctual and powerful enough to throw themselves (like some desperate pilgrims finding their homeland) upon these sandcastles. This is when we realize that the mantra of our inner lies which we keep repeating, provides us with little or no spiritual oxygen to breathe, let alone any semblance of a permanent shelter. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think God intentionally and specifically crashes the sandcastles of our souls. I think it’s orchestrated in the nature of creation for the tide to rise and ebb over the beach. It's seedtime and harvest; night and day; spring to winter; it's the span of birth, life, and death. I see no point in blaming God for reality, or piously stating, “God took away my false idols so I will worship him alone and become a better disciple.” I think our society is terrified of eternal realities such as death. Because of Christ, death is now the route that completes our lives on earth and ushers us to be born anew in the fullness of the presence of God. Our culture’s intense fear of death only points to the truth that most are not actually able to live life from that place “where the blood bubbles upward,” as Jack London described. Everyone is going to die, and as St. Rich Mullins sung, “it’s no more or less our fault, than it is our destiny.” When the sandcastles of our lives are washed away on the beach, it’s a message from the Book of Creation that the Lord deeply desires for us to live on the entire beach, breathing the open air; not cramped in the small structures that we build and rebuild, all the while believing they’re the final image of reality. Living on the beach is that place of freedom, that land of divine imaginings and wondrous possibilities. This liberty transforms us into childlike spirits even though the responsibility that comes with this freedom is great. As I listen to the wind combing through the branches of the trees, my seaside wanderlust carries me further, and I take comfort in it's rage. Is this because most people despise windy days, and I always have a need to be contrary to what's popular? Or am I connected to a more ancient and soulful thought that ironically thanks God for the storm: *“Fierce is the wind tonight,
I take the wind as my ally against the enemies that would rout my soul this night. I now have no need of my sandcastles—the entire earth, sea, and sky are my home until my battle is finished, and I find myself washed up on heaven's shore in the courts of eternal day. -David *-(from the St. Gall Ms. 8th or 9th cent) |
