Liturgies, Heritage and Meditation

May 25, 2015

"When there are thoughts, it is distraction;

when there are no thoughts, it is meditation."

Ramana Maharshi

The beach is my meditation.

I sit.

I listen.

I watch.

I feel the sun.

I feel the wind.

I feel the

sand. I hear the waves. I hear the laughter. I watch the horizon. I watch the children. I can't seem to think one thought. I try. Any thought would be distraction. And no thought even comes to distract. If I read, it is frivolity. No thinking required. Pure superficiality.

The beach is my meditation.

When I lived on the California coast, I jogged at the beach, I walked on beach; kept my chair and towel in my car to sit and read for a hour or two to unwind from my day. Drove to the beach in the predawn light to meditate on God's word and fellowship with Him. Many parties were held at the beach. Many glasses of wine savored watching the sunset over the ocean. Many romantic walks, fingers entwined. Many tears shed processing life while the sun melted behind the Channel islands. Many boat trips meditating on the rise and fall of the waves.

Surfers call it their religion.

They feel one with the ocean.

It is their meditation.

We suffer in our culture from information overload. Always receiving new and unsolicited information. (Like this blog.) Everything we want to know is at our fingertips. When do we let our minds sleep while keeping our eyes open? When do we meditate? When do we feel nothing but our breath moving our bellies in and out?

The liturgies of life are found in it's daily, monthly, seasonally, yearly, generational movement; in and out, over and around, up and down. The sun rises and sets, the cold turns to warm and back to cold again. The ocean pushes onto the shore and pulls out again. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, events. We worship once a week. Daily eat three squares, sleep, wake. These liturgies keep us sane, productive, in our places, submitting to God's providence and faithfulness.

No one can escape God's faithfulness.

He causes the sun to rise and set on the faithful and the faithless.

He is over all, through all and in all.

"For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature,

have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world^, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ^"

^{Roman 1:20}

^{My beach liturgy began as a baby. Going to the beach was part of my childhood. From my pre-memories of stuffing cigarette butts into my mouth as a 12-month old to my first experience riding a wave into shore merely body surfing, the beach has been my recreational liturgy. I can remember the exhilaration as a child of standing on the shore with the water moving the sand out from under my feet and sinking my heels deeper than sea level.}

^{My great-grandparents' heritage began on Catalina Island where my great-great grandfather ran the first fleet of glass-bottom boats: row boats that took paying customers out to witness sea life through a window into the ocean. We spent many summers there. Sitting on the sand. Swimming. Paddleboarding. Hiking. Meditating.}

^{Watching my own children jumping waves, riding them into shore, sitting in meditation as the water moves the sand out from under them until their legs and behind are buried under the current, fills me with contentment knowing this is a heritage I am passing on to them as my parents did to me, and their parents to them and their parents them.}

^{My children don't articulate it, but they know God's power, God's faithfulness, God's creativity, God's joy simply by experiencing the liturgy of the ocean's and shore's rites. They don't articulate it, but they are walking through the scientific process as they dig, build, sit on the boogie board, sway with the waves. My children don't articulate it, but they are meditating too. Nothing filling their minds but the sand on their toes, shovel in their hands, spray on their faces.}

^{The beach is my meditation.}