The Mighty Blue

The ocean equals life. It equals every metaphor one could ever use to describe life and God and surviving in general. I will even be so bold as to say that I challenge anyone to present a situation to me that I cannot use the ocean as a metaphor phor...I mean for. I mean, to be grammatically correct, I challenge anyone to present a situation to me for which I cannot use the ocean as a metaphor. That's better.

In my longing for days of summer and lying on the sun-heated sand listening to the endless pounding of the surf, I have started frequenting beach parking lots and watching the Mighty Blue from the safety of my heated car. Mostly, my car finds itself at Linnell Landing after church on Sundays. Today was no different. The only real difference was that today I did not get out of my car and inhale the fresh, salty wind blowing against my face. I did not get out of my car and offer a dance of rejoicing in my stilettos. Somehow the rolling towers of clouds prevented me from doing anything but stare in wonder and listen to the sound of many waters.

It doesn't matter how many times I see the ocean. If I've seen it a million times, every time feels like the first. The shoreline is constantly broken down and reformed, the water is constantly moving to unseen currents, the sky is constantly reflected in different ways. The ocean is ever changing and yet ever the same. It is always reliable in the sense that it's never reliable. Old Cape stories of fishermen and whalers speak of how the sea would call to the sailor's like the ancient Siren's...would beckon them ever to their watery graves. Oh to have such a fate. It's a feeling that only those blessed enough to experience a relationship with the deep blue of the ocean can share.

Today I was struck with how the water and sky use each other as a looking glass, always reflecting the other. And yet, each is so unique. There are days when I can't tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. But, today the water was shades darker than the sky, whispers of whitecaps dancing upon the agitated waves. The land mass of the Outer Cape, curving itself along the horizon line, was clothed in shadow and the dune grass in the foreground was bent in the wind.

I was reminded of my deep love for this place. And I don't mean just the physical location of Cape Cod, but rather this place of haunted dreams and where all sorrow and joy seem to meet; where the aspect of the steep dunes crowned with beach grass and the far outstretching of the water collide to form the soothing of the soul.

Perhaps this will be my last summer living in this place I've called home for 24 years. Perhaps the luxury of running to the beach whenever I desire will end with the year. I've always told God that I will follow Him wherever He leads me...as long as it's by the ocean. Now, after all these years, I finally have come to realize that He is my ocean. Deep. Endless. Able to calm the fiercest storm within me. Able to relieve all anxiety in my heart. Always changing, always the same.

Always there.