Fragments

Every time I retreat to the beach, that very first stroll stirs up a whirlwind in my brain.   I feel compelled to wrangle that elusive swirling into cohesive thoughts but it's made up of impressions, emotions, and loosely formed connections that are difficult for a rationalist like me to articulate.    The urge to write is driven, at least in part, by my need to "take dominion" over the chaos...to bring order to the overgrown wildflower garden in my head.  I need order.  Less, I think, from a need to control and more from an inherent desire to understand.  Or, if truth be told, it may be mostly from a desire to FEEL a bit less.   Ideas can be tamed, arranged, ordered, classified, and brought to a conclusion in a way that emotions can't.  At least not for me.     

When I try to articulate the swirl, the words seem shallow in comparison to profound feelings that accompany the thoughts.  But that doesn't stop me from trying.

My first impression is of the vibrant playfulness of the wildlife that inhabits the beaches of Florida and Southern Alabama.  The egrets, the seagulls, the pelicans, the crabs, and the sandpipers exhibit a joyful determination in their quest for nourishment, which seems their primary focus.  The soaring and diving of the pelicans exude joy.  The sandpipers flit about frantically, pecking through the freshly wet sand for insects, worms, or vulnerable crustaceans.  The herons don't seem exactly playful - they appear serious and stark and intense in their hunt, but their explosively graceful takeoffs inspire awe. Heron Chasing Sunset

My second impression is of the vastness and power of the ocean.  Duh, right?  But every single time, it overwhelms me.  The mind of God conceived and created this.  Ex nihilo.  What?!  And he holds this massive ecosystem together by the power of his word.  What is man that you take thought of and care for him?! Why gift this superfluity of grandeur, this overflow of abundance to creatures whose senses are too often dulled to its magnificence?  

My third impression mingles the realities of beauty and rest and resurrection.  The generosity of God is manifest in his sharing this expression of created beauty with his creatures.  The goodness of God shines through the predictability of the setting sun and the onset of a time of rest.  The faithfulness of God is reinforced in our knowing that the setting sun will rise again tomorrow morning...without fail...without end...without qualification...without regard to how well I lived, enjoyed, appreciated, used, or gave thanks for the day that just passed.  No. Matter. What.  The sun will rise and I receive the blessed promise of a brand new day.  A daily resurrection.  

The words remain inadequate, but the experience draws out a sense of wonder and forces me into a posture of thanksgiving for the manifold gifts of the Creator.

The Outrage of Grace

I said grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over — until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed. As long as we leave, in our dramatizations of grace, one single hope of a moral reckoning, one possible recourse to salvation by bookkeeping, our freedom-dreading hearts will clutch it to themselves. And even if we leave none at all, we will grub for ethics that are not there rather than face the liberty to which grace calls us. Give us the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, and we will promptly lose its point by preaching ourselves sermons on Worthy and Unworthy Confession, or on The Sin of the Elder Brother. Give us the Workers in the Vineyard, and we will concoct spurious lessons on The Duty of Contentment or The Moral Aspects of Labor Relations. 

Restore to us, Preacher, the comfort of merit and demerit.  Prove for us that there is at least something we can do, that we are still, at whatever dim recess of our nature, the masters of our relationships.  Tell us, Prophet, that in spite of all our nights of losing, there will yet be one redeeming card of our very own to fill the inside straight we have so long and so earnestly tried to draw to.  But do not preach us grace.  It will not do to split the pot evenly at 4am and break out the Chivas Regal.  We insist on being reckoned with. Give us something, anything: but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance.  --Robert Farrar Capon