Like many, I took a summer holiday at the beach. Suntans are fading even as scattered sand remains as a reminder.
It has been many years since I had the opportunity to watch the waves roll in over the sand - not just for a few hours on a sunny afternoon, but for a week, as wind, tide and weather plied their trade on the oceanic view. I looked forward to the break.
From a wooden stairway above the beach, my first view of the water was breathtaking. The western water stretched endlessly as the late afternoon sun danced a path to the horizon. The reflected glitter was almost blinding to my dull senses and it was easy to understand why early humans believed that water captured divine properties of the sun and moon.
As it does in Ireland, the wind off the western shore has its own feel, especially at twilight. The fabled paradise Tir na n'Og is located in the western ocean. For hero and mortal alike there is wisdom to be gained in the west - but it is found only by those who suffer for insight, the wisdom of the west is wrested from loss.
Ireland, Britain, Scotland and Wales are island communities. Surrounded as they are by water, the ocean is the boundary between this world and the Other. To voyage beyond the "seventh wave" was to go beyond the known world and most immigrants, like my relatives in the 1800's, would not see their homeland again.
The following morning I mustered our crew down to the beach to watch the Perseid meteor shower at 4:30 AM. The lack of artificial lighting created a perfect venue for shooting stars that I didn't want to miss. Alone at the beach we watched the celestial show amid the ceaseless motion of the darkened waves.
Under the stars, the unlit presence of the waves pulled at my attention - shadowy timelessness lapping at the grains of mortal life, forever wearing, forever murmuring in a language understood in the body, not the mind.
Much later that day we returned to the beach, sand toys and towels in hand. The sun had replaced the darkness and the value of water and waves was calculated in terms of adventure and recreation - energetic children in the water with adults reclining watchfully on the beach.
The water that I watched carried echoes of its own path. Not just of the fog and mist that enveloped primordial life, but ages of ice and eons of mountains, rivers and rain. With every drop of spray, water holds the liquid memories of eternity and of all those adults, like me, whose dearest childhood days were spent playing in its tides.
I was not long for the beach, I never could resist the siren song of the waves. Soon I crashed among them with my children. Children play so easily in the water, they go in, they come out, they return - they are fluid. Just as waves flow in and out, hesitant to pass their own high tide mark, so adults move toward the sea. They come down to water's edge, they walk along the shore, but they are often hesitant to cross into the water, cautious of immersion. Both are tidal in their own way - humans and waves.
The next day dawned grey and windy. Finding myself with a bit of free time I made for the beach. Before I saw them, I felt the waves calling. With surreal haste I pressed against the breeze and down to the waterline. The waves, much larger than on previous days, crashed with impunity. Like horses, the foaming green-grey water raced diagonally as well as straight on toward the beach, forming whitecaps even to the distance.
The turbulence of the waves seemed to reflect a widening turbulence within my own self. Half expecting an answer I asked out loud, "what is it?" Disappointed at the lack of response I paced the shore for some time with the same uneasy question. Happily the beach was deserted, saving onlookers from the specter of a middle-aged woman attempting conversation with the near roaring surf.
I found my answer that day, not in the counterpoint to my question, but in the nature of my disquiet. A symmetry arose when the unrest within me resonated with the breaking dissonance outside of me - a symmetry I created by answering the call to come. My answer had been in my own response to attend to the waves - "as within, so without." Even as I write this, the uneasy door opened that day remains ajar and time, I imagine, will eventually lead me through it.
Later that day our group again visited the shore - the sky sunny, the water swirling and choppy. I was repeatedly knocked down by the waves, surprised each time at the energy behind each swell. Retrieving my senses at some point I thought the better of the battering and retreated to my towel.
After nightfall the unsettled weather ushered in a thunderstorm. Sitting at an overlook I watched the weather moving in from the west. Lightening flashed within the clouds, revealing the restless water below. In the still clear sky to the north a meteor flashed long across space and within my reach, fireflies blinked on and off.
Such marvels, these flashes of light, those moments of revelation. In our dark journey through life we occasionally receive grace - like a firefly, a quiet enlightenment in our personal lives, or vibrant lightening enlivening our culture or the atmosphere in which we live and more rarely, a sudden radiant shooting star, an event or understanding that streaks across universal consciousness. Three gifts of illumination for three spheres of life.
On the following day the weather cleared, the water a dazzling tempest. A walk along the wet sand gave rise to the inevitable thoughts about footprints, how heavily we travel at times and how easily our path is erased. Such a thin line between where we walk and where we walk no more, where mind meets enduring mystery.
But it is along that line where the significance of life can be found. The word "equinox" means "equal night," and refers to the momentary balance of the length of day and night. The autumnal equinox occurs on September 23 this year, at 2:52 AM PDT. Balance along that line might mean to look with one's heart to the western ocean at the same time one's mortal feet remain on this side of eternity. Dispense with duality, and find, for one divine moment, the symmetry in one's Nature, within and without.
That evening we had a bonfire on the beach. Sparks spiraling up from the fire mingled with the fireflies. On the horizon, a crescent moon appeared dusty red as it set in the thickening air. The next day, our last full day, a weather system pushed through bringing heavy rain. It rained with an intensity I had not recently experienced, drumming the rooftops and anyone splashing through it. The waves welcomed the returning water - a cycle complete - and I couldn't help but feel the rising tide of the days to come.