Wetting My Toes

Greetings to my fellow bloggers--those of you at St. Barnabas who I know and love--and those of you who I have never met, yet feel a certain attachment to for having read of your thoughts, experiences, struggles, insights, and simple joys. This is my first blog--I am glad to announce--and as I have no patience for writing the old-fashioned way employing pen and paper, I hope this electronic means will provide me with the opportunity to sort through my thoughts by writing them down and thus capture the momentary flickers of clarity that sometimes chance themselves to delight my mind before my head cramps up, darkness ensues, and all is lost once more.

The house is relatively quiet this afternoon: only the dull grinding clamour of my father drilling through our kitchen floor to rework the plumbing for our addition. No brothers hollering to their friends. No pack of neighborhood boys stampeding up the stairs like elephants to hurl waterballoons off the balcony at the junior high girls below. No videogames blaring so loudly as to fool me into believing George Lucas was in my living room filming Star Wars Episode III. No, my two brothers and sister are at San Onofre state beach surfing the afternoon away only to leave behind a sad silence--not to mention a sad sister. If it weren't for work, or rather the neccesity of money--which is one of the better consequences of work--I would be with them.

I comfort myself, however, in the exhillarating memory of last week. Riding down the smooth face of a sparkling wave on what is affectionately known to all but Erica as the "bellatine"—a boat of a surfboard made for a 6’2’’ 280 pound man—at San Onofre state beach at approximately 9am on three hours of sleep, I discovered the enormous natural high surfing can illicit. Waiting in between sets, I straddled the board, which being a good four inches thick, rested easily on the surface of the water. Looking down into the clear waters where shadows reflecting the depths danced and whispers of recent local shark sightings echoed, I grew uncomfortable. Compounded with the over-active imagination I’ve honed after too many years of criminal drama shows and intense spy flicks (hey! sometimes they do have to do with water and people getting drowned, dumped, or eaten--by worse things than sharks!)—I proceeded to utterly freak myself out and decided to lie back down on my belly, where I could fool myself into the nonexistence of such dangers by removing them from my immediate view.

I am not a complete wimp for being slightly afraid of the ocean. The ocean is an ancient symbol of chaos. In ancient Greek mythology, the dark, silent, water-filled abyss from which all things come into existence is personified by a diety named Chaos. In Babylonian tradition, the saltwater ocean is personified by Tiamat, a huge female dragon, who is the primordial mother of all that exists, including the gods themselves. In our own biblical tradition, water engulfs the formless earth cast in darkness before God seperates and orders it into his creation.

Only my feet dangled into the water while my head rested almost eyelevel with the gently sloshing ripplets shooting across the glassy silver of the ocean on whose surface I was just resting, wet and shivering. How small and insignificant I was. The swells rolled under me and one knocked me off my board. Water writhed between my toes. I was powerless in a seeming chaotic existence. I clamoured back onto the "bellatine" and turned my head to see where the silver water met the golden sky. I gazed upon the tremendous beauty of the ocean, the sky, all of life. In God's hands all meaning, purpose. I sensed a order in the whole of the universe and was overcome. Exalted be the Lord our God!