Last month I returned once more to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  I walked the seashore between Duck and Corolla, pondering my previous journeys there and the many other places around the globe that had me immersed in thought on or near the great oceans.  Henry Beston, in his essay The Headlong Wave describes the immeasurable wonder of seas and seashore best:  

“The seas are the heart’s blood of the earth.  Plucked up and kneaded by the sun and the moon, the tides are systole and diastole of earth’s veins.  The rhythm of waves beats in the sea like a pulse in living flesh.  It is pure force, forever embodying itself in a succession of watery shapes which vanish on its passing….Consider the marvel of what we see.  Somewhere in ocean, perhaps a thousand miles and more from this beach, the pulse beat of earth liberates a vibration, an ocean wave.  Is the original force circular, I wonder, and do ocean waves ring out from the creative beat as they do on a quiet surface broken by a stone?  Are there, perhaps, ocean circles so great and so intricate that they are unperceived?  Once created, the wave or the arc of a wave begins its journey through the sea.  Countless variations precede it, countless vibrations follow after.  It breaks, dissolves, and is gone. The innermost waters it last inhabited flow back in marbled foam to become a body to another beat, and to be again flung down.  So it goes night and day, and will go till the secret heart of the earth strikes out its slow beat and the last wave dissolves upon the last forsaken shore.”

     

Rumbling continuously through my thoughts all the past month has been this poetic truth that Paul wrote to the Corinthians…”We have this treasure in jars of clay.”  The treasure he speaks of is the incredible priceless gift of life.  That any of us made it into this sphere we call “life” is so grand a miracle that none has fully comprehended its full meaning.  We catch a glimpse of this splendid treasure in rare moments when we see love demonstrated in acts of kindness, when another is acknowledged or rewarded for work well done, when artists have given back to the world their talent and very best, and when we gather to hear a eulogy for a sojourner worthy of their footprint on the earth.  It is then that we fully comprehend Paul’s metaphor “pot of clay”, the brevity of our time, and the fragile container that holds the treasure.  Growing older, beset by the reality of spent youth and vigor, we marvel at the accuracy of Paul’s metaphor, a pot of clay having served as a vulnerable but temporary reservoir.  Then we read again Jesus’ promise to His disciples: “Because I live, you also shall live.”  Life here and life Eternal!   Kneeling there in gratitude, we worship.

    Summer Meadow