"The first and last word belong to God, and therefore not to death, but life, not to sorrow, but joy, not to weeping, but laughter. For surely it is God who has the last laugh." (Conrad Myers)
How can such beauty ever be described? The ocean breathes, sometimes groaning, with the moist in and out of life itself. Caterpillar clouds consume mountaintops, and towering strands of evergreens disappear in the grey cocoons. We walk along a cliff, under the umbrella of an ocean-side forest where lime green grandfather-beards, heavy with a fog of precipitation, drape from grotesquely twisted and moss-covered tree branches. Unseen buoys ring warning bells somewhere out at sea, and the lighthouse sounds a foghorn every 20 seconds. Every available surface is kissed with a moisture so gentle that even the spider-webs glisten and dazzle. And behind it all, the surf, the ever-pounding white-noise of Nature, lulls thoughts and draws walkers and surfers and beach-combers and those who are content to just stand at the edge of the Island.
We are on the wild West Coast, walking the Pacific Rim trail, one of our favorite yearly haunts. Here there is a summer season, an off-season, and a storm season when accommodations are at a premium, and tourists come to watch the enormous and powerful waves that move across the ocean and slam into the shoreline. Even though we are not in storm season, there is a constancy to the pounding rhythm of breakers as they crash on out-lying boulders, and ripple onto the shore. It is a lullaby at night, and we sleep with the doors and windows open. In the morning, walking on the beach is its own meditation, with a silence available between the waves, beyond the ocean's roar, and all of life becomes a metaphor for the simple spiritual walk we are called to.
When I was pregnant with Brett, we lived in a house in Colorado, on the edge of a field of a scrubby pasture with wildflowers decorating the otherwise brown and cactus-strewn land, and a view of mountains in the distance. Each morning that summer, I would walk the rocky path, mesmerized by the colors of the sunrise on the Indian Paint Brush blossoms, and listen to the horses and cows behind the fence. From somewhere deep within, the song would emerge: "Who will buy this wonderful morning? Such a sky, I never did see. Who will tie it up with a ribbon, and put it in a box for me?" I find myself singing it again this summer. I sing and watch the geese flying over the water in formation, the sun rising behind them: "Who will buy this wonderful feeling? I'm so high, I swear I could fly." The summer becomes the song; the lyrics become a swelling of gratitude.
This wild west coast sings to my soul like no other place I've visited and loved. She holds secrets behind her mists: giant boulders that will not submit to the constant pounding, and break the waves that crash around them; tiny distant islands standing alone against the ocean's onslaught; hidden coves with sea kelp floors and caves accessible and exquisite only at low-tide, like the beauty revealed after our hearts have been awash in grief when our storms briefly subside.
Off the main Pacific Rim trail, hidden through a patch of particularly wind-sculpted trees, there is a small bench high above the ocean, with a stunning view of the lighthouse. The first year we found the bench, the colors of the imbedded tiny Lego pieces and marbles were bright yellow and red and green, playful and eye-catching. The memorial plaque dedicated the bench to a two year old. It took my breath away, which usally happens when beauty and joy are juxtaposed with the mystery of deep sorrow. Now the bench is weather-beaten, with fading colors, and unless one really pays attention, it would be a rather pedestrian seat in a spectacular setting. I watch as people walk around it to get a better photo-op, side-stepping an ocean of someone's pain ( "THE pain" I once heard Stephen Levine call it, acknowledging the universal nature of grief), to snap a picture of another ocean, one with sound and fury and the power to also open the heart.
We had never been to the west coast in October, and thought we would find changing colors through the mountains. Instead, although sunny weather had been predicted, we found clouds and heavy precipitation as we descended towards the coast. On our way home, we experienced the opposite, and witnessed the beginning of the bright seasonal colors in the high evergreens. The same road seemed like two different trips.
Michael tells me sometimes that he wishes he could live in 'my' world, one he sees as fantasy and dreams, where I imagine that people are kind and life is without struggle. I marvel at this, each time he says it. There is no perfect world, except the one we live in each moment, perfect in its imperfections. And too often, I am the one being unkind in moments when I know better. Father Gregory, a Benedictine monk at St. Joseph's Abbey in Covington, told me once that Christ said the burden was easy and the yoke was light - He didn't promise a world without either. Although our roads through life are quite different, there is exquisite beauty available for the seeing, through the pain, and in the ultimate Laughter.
We decided this would be a wonderful way to end our seasons here: with the roar of a surf evoking at once joy and melancholy, and with the mist folding its curtains behind our departure, the fog horns reminding us that we are constantly guided through storms as we leave for home, heads bowed, grateful, joyful, blessed.
The last two days have been spent tidying up and winterizing our humble little piece of Paradise. I do it with happy memories of morning walks, musical outings with friends, and the new connections and deeper relationships of the summer. It is difficult to leave, and joyful to anticipate being back with family and friends. Cleaning the toilets and walking the Pacific Rim trail, however, are very different aspects of life. And although I know my spiritual path and teachings tell me to live in the grace of the Now, and to be in the joy of the moment - remembering that "THIS is the day the Lord has made" - I keep wandering back to the sound of the ocean and the deep mysticism in the red-barked gnarled Arbutus trees, the winding paths and windswept scrub brush.
The memorial on Benjamin's toy-studded bench reads: "We listen for your laughter in the wind and the rain, and the crashing waves..." I stand beside his bench and listen, too. The wind, the rain, the crashing waves become the first and last word, become the last Laugh. We listen for Your call, the Voice that speaks to us between the waves of our lives, in the wind of our thoughts and the rain of our tears and between the silences of our crashing waves. We listen for the first and last word, and hear the Laughter in it all, and know that no matter where we are, it is good to be here.
YAY GOD
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