free wandering life

the sea is still deeper

In so many ways the world seems to be getting smaller and smaller and with technology and the media and the constant feed of information from around the world, it feels like everything is happening in my own backyard.  The weight of the world starts pressing in on me, suffocating me if I let it. 

Taking in the expanse of the sea lifts that weight.  Did you make the sea? God asks me. Do you keep the gulls in the air?  Do you send the storms and waves to carve out the caves and rocks that, to you, have been here for eons and eons?  All those problems you hear about have been going on for millenia and all the while these ancient bastions of rock and sea have been keeping vigil, unmoved by the problems of the world.  Does the world seem to be falling apart to you?  It has fallen apart before in the eyes of men and women whose only perspective is from their narrow fleeting view from their own lives.  

But I live on, God says.  I live on and it's not over until I say it's over.  Look up!  The sea is still deeper than any man has seen, the sky is still wider than any man can take in at one time, the trees are still older than any one man's lifetime, the rocks will still be here even if the entire world economy fails because I live on and nothing will bring me down.  It's not over until I say it's over.

off ramp

Every workday morning, I take the same highway to downtown, and I exit the highway on the same off ramp on my way to work.  Every workday morning.

On Wednesday morning of this week, I sat on that off ramp and while waiting for the light to change and looking out my driver's side car window, I saw--really saw--for the first time, the grandest of oak trees.  How could I have missed it so many times before?  But there it was in its silent grandeur, it's reaching branches and its trunk miles around in circumference, standing silently as it had for maybe 80 years, certainly longer than the highway had been there.  And the world rushes by every morning in all its pressing busyness...so busy, such important business to take care of, so much pressing in on every side...and the oak stands and lets it all go rushing by...doing what it has been doing for years...growing, reaching, living, sending roots down deep, silently and slowly sucking up life into leaves and branches and leaflets, silently and slowly...very slowly...so not in a hurry...becoming what it was meant to be.  

Let the world rush by in its perceived self-importance and rush, let it all rush by in such pretentious self-absorption...the oak is not distracted or misguided or caught off guard...it just does, everyday, what it was meant to do--grow--slowly--steadily--silently--into its grandeur.