It is a perfect day. We are driving to the beach; we are listening to music.
We are expecting traffic, but there is none. The parking lot is full of cars; we pay to park. People with umbrellas and bags, children and towels, and chairs slung over their shoulders, walk slowly toward the boardwalk, which leads to the water and the sand and the place we are all here to visit. Children, toddling behind parents, are carrying buckets, skipping happily behind older siblings. Barefoot babies in diapers wait obediently beside adults mesmerized by the activity around them. A line of bags and beach chairs lean against the wood fence outside the bathrooms.
My skin feels the cool wind before it feels the sun. My legs just go, I can’t think about the long boardwalk weighed down with all the things, which separates the parking lot from the beach, I just go. five minutes out of my day, I am laden like a donkey with snacks and drinks and books, but so are we all. I pass a lot of people. In the restrooms, on the boardwalk, at the snack shack half dressed, in bathing suits and short shorts and tanks or thongs. Boobs and butts and hairy legs and bellies hang out. I always see too much of everyone, but here it’s expected. This is the place we wear practically nothing comfortably in public.
There are people everywhere no one talks to much to each other, there is a silence and conversation carries between blankets and by the wind. Here we are, together in the same space using the same sand and water and toilets. Basking under the same sun, sharing the same parking lot and it seems to work. No one is fighting over the sunlight, no one is fighting over the sand or the water. No one is fighting except maybe a couple of young lovers or two siblings over a bucket. Someone’s music is too loud, their conversation inappropriate everyone around them notices, but no one complains, they just move their chair.
There is a large woman looking for a changing room with a door. There is none. “It’s pretty private I tell her.” Pointing down to the cement rooms at the end, as if we’ve been old friends for years. she smiles, but doesn’t listen to me and finds a bathroom stall instead…yup just like my friends.
My feet sink into the warm sand, It is soft, like a hug and familiar like morning coffee, I feel myself exhale my shoulders drop my tension eases. I stop briefly to remove my sandals and pick them up, I turn my face to the sky and close my eyes as if I am alone, even though there are 1000 people all around me, I don’t care, we all do it. And then I walk. My feet sinking with each step, the sand is even more white and beautiful and my heart warm and full. My calfs feel the burn , my shoulder the weight of my bag, something is digging into my wrist, my hands clutching the chair and cramping, but I just keep going, almost there, oh if only I had this much resolve when it came to faith. The tide is out and distracts me from the discomfort. There are umbrellas everywhere, no two are the same. People lounge in chairs, some with stripes, others with spots, faded bright, old, new. There are people of every color shape and size too. Some are standing, children running, old and young laying down on blankets , sleeping reading, camping out. We are all strangely vulnerable here. People chatting , music playing kids shoveling making castles but mostly holes and trenches to the waters edge. The water is cold ,it is cape cod cold in June. The water is icicles a hundred sharp icicles on your legs and naked belly and arms. We don’t go for the water, we go for the sun and the sand and to remember and rest from the routine of life.
Finally we find a spot to drop our gear. We set up our chairs, spread out an old blanket. Unbutton shorts, rip off tanks and plop down . Immediately reaching for the potato chips. The rest, is a real rest, we’ve been waiting for not all day, or all week but all winter. Its not quiet at all peoples voices carrying conversations, music, airplanes, laughter, and yet it is totally quiet. No-one is expecting anything from me. I don’t want to leave ever. There are people everywhere on every side of me, but there is no obligation to talk just to be, exist and live in the same oceans edge, all here for the rest from winter and yet free from meaningless conversation that we make to be polite, to entertain, to be responsible and friendly. And not one is judged for it. The sun is warm and friendly on my skin. It wraps me in a comforting tone; lulling me to close my eyes, to breathe deep, to smile to hope to do everything and anything good to want to live. It awakens me while it gives me a rest. I settle like I have’t in months of cold bitter frigid sunless days. I settle like I will never leave. But I will have to eventually. I just don’t want to. I don’t want to think about the world on the other side of the boardwalk. I could live on this dose of sunshine for days without food or water, just a steady diet of sun.
This is the place where everything is magically okay. Where just for a moment in time and space I can forget the stress of the world around me and yet at the same time the world is all around me. I know a lot of people feel that way, which is why wherever you go in the world when there is sunny warm days and even cool windy days, beaches are populated with people. It makes one wonder if God meets us there in the rest. We are always trying to get to that place, we all, as if we have a home-ing device make our way to Him, to his rest, from various roads and paths and reasons. We all show up strip down and bask in his light.
my faith place 