The sound of the surf is not apparent as the car pulls away; they are strangers doing me a favor, neither of us have much after-thought. We don’t touch every life we cross, not really. I am a sight, I suppose, with stitches still crisscrossing the side of my head and my distant gaze. I heard their whispers, “So what’s her story?” No reply was offered.
I shoulder my pack and realize I have no idea where the trailhead is. I don’t have to pray for guidance; I’ve been praying since before I stepped on the plane at LAX.
The Oregon coast is peppered with mysterious caves and roads ending into nothingness or the sea. Coves encircled with jagged rocks. Lighthouses projecting warnings and symbolizing more than we can articulate with every passing digitized year. Like fire, like rain, the lighthouse speaks to our primal and so to our eternal. The lighthouse, twenty-five miles south of my destination, will be my only visible companion not laid here by the hand of God.
I step into the forest and lose myself beneath the canopy of green, maple leaf stars come to light my way in filtered gold and dancing shadows. I think of the wonder of God. I think of my pack of clothes, bread, fish and water. I think of the ten mile hike ahead of me. I think of the sun glancing through the trees. I think of the twenty-seven years behind me. I think of the way that love weaves itself into our existence, indelible and unearthly. I think of how easy it is to walk away.
“I thought I heard your voice
say you love me today.
But it was only the sound
of my heart breaking."
In time with my boots on the trail (I think it’s the trail)... I remember how often I would turn to Christ as a child, as an adolescent. Every little thing was a group decision. I might choose a long-way ‘round but I always came to His way and He always told me, clearly, what that way was before my feet ever moved. I’m not sure when I decided it was okay to consciously go another path. Not a path *in conflict* with Christ’s but a path not quite as easy as He directed.
No... that’s a lie. I am sure when. It was when I refused to leave (performance college) and devote myself full-time to (visual arts college), to painting. That was the moment. That silver afternoon when my mother’s voice on the phone told me everything before she said the words. That moment when I threw down “easy,” and “comfortable,” and all the other safe ways of living... that moment when I told myself that the voice of God was needed somewhere else, by someone else, because everything brilliant with faith had been ripped from my chest.
An *accident*... not fate... the *mundane world* had taken my grandmother that day, the woman who was my spiritual center. Somewhere, in a dark mourning place, I decided to push myself to my physical, emotional, and spiritual limits. To do *everything* the hard way. To not just take the long-way ‘round but to take only the way littered with brambles and populated with beasts because... sweet Christ!... I wanted hurt, to remind myself to *feel*... because without her, it would have been so easy not to.
Then, when dual Masters didn’t kill me... I walked away from painting all together. And that made me understand what *hurting* really felt like.
* * *
The path is clearer now... and then lost among young trees. The cabin belongs to a casual friend, someone who has no qualms about our vast differences and mutual dissatisfactions. I have been hiking for two hours. I think sometimes, when the wind shifts, that I hear the sea... I think I may never leave here. I think I like the feeling of being lost with Christ.
She bought the cabin and surrounding land from a man with deep eyes of sorrow. She recounted his story to me with some bafflement and then shock when I couldn’t stop the tears that eventually grew to sobs that shook my shoulders. I murmured to her she must be a good story-teller then politely pushed her hands off my shoulders, got on my bike and went home. I climbed to the roof and lay under the sky on my tar beach. I wanted to be with someone empathic to man. I wanted to be alone with Christ.
Alyson said: The closing was so stressful. I thought it was just going to be me and my agent picking up the keys, signing some papers. The money stuff was done. But there he was. The owner, you know? Oh, sixty or about that. Tells me he wanted to see who was buying the house. That his wife – for real – had purchased the place before they were married, which was later in life, right? That she was drawn to the sea. That she loved the long hike in... no other way to reach it. The way the forest blocks the cabin for miles to the east and then opens suddenly to sheer, jagged rocks on either side and the tiniest beachy cove. That they lived there together for twenty years and then, one day, she just walked into the sea.
* * *
Because we all have our loves, great and small. Some of them romantic, rife with passion and compromise. Some of them poetic, like the best love between friends. Others simple like warm loam between my mother’s fingers in her garden, or fine wood-working to my father. Like living scripture was to my grandmother. Like praying is to me.
We have these loves. These sparks, embers that whisper and call to us. Tug us by our heart or along strings of passion... wake us up, turn us on, turn us around and point us the way... we have these jewels, like beads, woven into the cloth of our lives. And sometimes... they conflict. Sometimes they conflict *spectacularly.*
Brush, paint and canvas were my first real love. My first love affair, in every sense of that word. Before I was ever really kissed. Before I considered myself a woman. Before I really allowed myself to let go, let God, I allowed myself to let go and paint. And I walked away. Just like that. I walked away.
And I didn’t ask God about it. I just did it.
“Talk to me while I’m listening now
while this love has a voice
that we both can hear.”
“Before I let it go
this greatest love I’ve ever known
talk to me while I’m listening.”
After three and a half hours I can hear the sea. If I lift my face into the wind, I can smell it. My own personal tide pulls me forward at twice the pace even as my legs start to protest and my ears start to ring. I have no interest in the cabin, the deep tub or a long shower. I have no desire for the feather bed or posh leather couch. Let the fireplace stay cold. I want the waves, the sand, the bracing cold, the face of Christ upon the expansive horizon. I want to gaze upon that element of God that covers most of our Earth and fills most of our body. I want to stand there, unseen by mortal eyes, unseen by anyone who speaks my language or carries like burdens. I want to simply be with my God.
Not for the first time, I want this... hike... this... *struggle* to be over. I just want to give myself over to Christ as I did when I was a child. I want Him to show me the way that will not bruise my face, and batter my spirit. And I want someone... I want Him... to tell me it’s okay not to fight so hard, so often, so endlessly.
I want Him to just tell me it’s all right to stay, to love, right now, right here.
As I near my destination... this cove I have never seen before but that has invaded my dreams continuously over the past two weeks, I am so at peace... even riddled (what a perfect word) with joy, that I break into a run and I don’t care when I body starts to shout for rest or even when trees give way to old rock slide and I have to scrape my hands and rip my jeans to climb.
* * *
Christ reaches out and gives us signs – loud and clear and dazzling – forty-seven thousand times a day. I don’t think asking Him for any more than that -- as well as His constant guidance -- is really appropriate. But if I could... if I actually found one day that I *had* to ask my Lord for one thing... it would be this:
Before a person walks away... before someone leaves behind a love that fills them with joy, with you, Christ... make them stop and pray. Make it mandatory. Make it a prerequisite for retreat.
Because it is retreat. And yet again and again I hear the warriors among us talk about walking away from their loves because, though it is the hardest thing they will ever do, it is the thing they must do. It is the marching orders. It is the hard tack they must chew and swallow (and often gag on) to keep moving ever onward in the fight. It the mantel of the martyr.
But we continue to do it. I do it. Walk away again and again. Make the decisions that are hard, that are a burden, because I’m trying to prove I’m an adult, I’m courageous, I’m selfless, I’m faithful. We walk away from secular and religious. We walk away from mythical and mundane. Whatever it is... we walk away. I walk away.
But you know what? I’m kinda interested in *staying* now.
I think it’s okay for me to just... stay.
And Christ? Yeah. He agrees with me.
EJ
From: "me"
To: "you"
Subject: Under these stars...
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2008 11:35 PM
...beside this sea, I find myself wanting nothing but what I have, you in my heart. The whispers of water on sand in the cool stillness of the night is a presence here so far from everyone and anything. Christ walks with the tide and leaves answers among the shells and sunstars. I might be alone on the planet, in the whole universe, if it weren't for my absolute certainty that you exist nearer to me now than almost ever before. There is peace there. And I love you.
Maybe this message will bounce off a star or an arrant satellite. To find you in your rain forest surrounded by green. The water at my back and the wind in my hair, I love you purely and without need. We might be in separate places but the stars above us are the same. And our Christ is a Christ we share. Perhaps I came here to discover... that listening to Him is always enough.
“Leave the world behind you now.
Forget about the why and how.
I want to feel your body lie
beside the sea, beneath the sky.”
