For spiritual renewal, it can help to be by the sea

By Ken Rogers
Published: August 8, 2008

I’ve made my annual pilgrimage to Holden Beach, a place of tranquility, myth, legend, mesmerizing mermaids, even ghosts.
With the force of a tropical depression, I celebrate this part of my life involving decades and four generations. Persistent pounding surf upon a sandy beach accentuates a deep, mystical grasp of reality, a slice of eternity, the past, present, an unformed future; life and death.
Sea oats swaying in the breeze on these North Carolina dunes near the water’s edge are a backdrop for an unfolding, inviting and captivating drama. Pelicans, like radar-guided missiles, accelerate bill-first to gather their sushi. Curious, hyperactive sandpipers with spindly legs scamper to capture a crab. Seagulls crisscross the sky. Sea turtles, having circumnavigated the oceans, return to their birthplace to lay eggs, perpetuating a species from ancient times.
Saltiness permeates sunshine. Many foods taste like chicken but nothing tastes like stuffed flounder. Persons of every shape, size and skin color indulge in a myriad of activities, part of a complicated puzzle assembled and disassembled by the changing tides. This mesmerizing, perpetual “happening” invites us to feast on personal discernment.
The beach of existential essence, a flat place where the land slides into the water, facilitates growing up or old, one day at a time; promotes thinking of things that should have been done and all one wants to do. Tears of grief purge the personality of misdirected energy. Anger, with all of its corrosive pain, is sent to sea like unwanted jellyfish. Young and old form bonds that can last for a lifetime. The ocean as cherished timeliness is the therapist insisting upon measurable goals, clear priorities, accountability and authenticity. Perpetually churning waters, providing at all times the potential for peace, are a parable about real life: storms, wind, lightning, even rip tides present challenges as we seek to be all that we can be and become.
As naïve as it sounds, I want our global leaders to assemble on an unadorned beach to address the world’s problems, discern solutions, harness the collective will to bring about peace. I hope Obama and McCain will allow salty wind to caress their faces as they affirm all persons as equals; grasp the absolute need for us to see the planet as home and everyone as family. I challenge them to begin with the rising of the sun beyond the horizon, to grasp the global truths that provide light for all; to embrace every mesmerizing sunset strategically placed in a pink and crimson sky; to grasp that every action taken, or not taken, impacts the whole of life, and truth resides beyond spin, innuendo, swift boat attacks and shallow scheming; and to abandon as so much driftwood the stupid, immoral paradigm of the end justifying the means, which shapes too many decisions in our stressed-out world.
Under clouds looking like wind-blown tresses of silver hair flung across the sky, against a backdrop of spumes of sand rising off the tops of dunes, Jesus went down to the Sea of Galilee to teach. Sitting in a boat moored in the gentle surf, he advocated a radical love to be lived out in pursuit of justice for all, in service that addresses the disparity between the rich and the poor, compassion that heals brokenness, and truth that transcends winning and losing.
All can benefit from a pilgrimage to the sea. Allow it to speak to heart and mind while dreaming the impossible dreams that are possible, while teaching us we have the power to confront the realities of life rather than run away. “Life can only be kept by giving it away. Then, it will bloom.”
Life, like the sea, is always shifting, changing, becoming. If from the sea we came, it is at the sea where the world stands still at high noon, and we take a break from daily grinds and frantic-paced worlds, regaining sight for our continued journey. Like opening jars of summertime, we partake of the gifts from the sea.