Was at Whiterocks beach yesterday morning just after nine a.m. Frost on the sand. Thick mist wrapping itself around the castle ruins and the cliffs. mystical and freezing, surfers like black ninjas looking brave and fragile in the relentless heaving and pounding surf.
We walked with a guy named jim, a beachcomber, storyteller, geologist, environmentalist... he told the ancient evolving story of the landscape and the first people to arrive on this coast 9000 years ago. he told us his own story and of the people he has met, of his conversations with his God.
We took large rocks, as big as we could hold, and stood and faced the surf.
I stood at the back of this group of figures.. all motionless... all facing out to sea... their still forms silhouetted against the waves. in our standing and gazing we felt the weight of our burdens. One by one each turned and silently thumped these rocks into a pile on the sand.
Jim choked back tears. on this freezing beach surrrounded by wild ancient dynamic beauty, what was more beautiful than this memorial to our burdens? i saw it as an act of witness to our acknowledgment that we are heavy laden and we long to make peace with whatever will help us lay them down.
this morning those stones will have long been washed up by the surf, our act of togetherness in vulnerability and courage dismantled by the sea... i will think of that beach and know that in that mystical place where land meets sea in neverending collision, lies a rock, a rock i named, offered to i know not what, in a living daring act of prayer, that will shift with the waves, lie heavy in the sand... a solid, black piece of the earth, it is holding my burden, a silent offering, like an intercessory candle in a church...
::
love has been the cause of all this suffering
what has been our loss has been its gaining
so lay your burdens down
burdens down
::
LB,x
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