As I sat down to write this blog, I scrolled back to see how long it is since the last one – two weeks! A lot has happened in that short time and I’m not surprised that I didn’t have the creative energy and maybe not even the time, to set digit to key board; My eldest granddaughter came for a few days, and then I had a road accident (no one hurt but I was weirdly shaken up), and I was commissioned for a pilot script, another granddaughter won a scholarship to an amazing international college, and then, yesterday I said a sad farewell to a good friend.
Oh, shucks, that’s the dramatist in me laying it on thick – my friend is not going far, just moving about 50 miles away, and it wasn’t ever so sad because we’ll still meet up, of course we will, but it’s the latest in a relentless series of farewells, some to other parts of this world and some to the best part of the next world, and I am fed up with saying goodbye. Sod it.
But here’s the thing – for every ‘good-bye’ there has been a ‘hello’. So all things work to the good, eh? Maybe you can finish that verse yourselves?
Watching the sea the other day, I realised that the pattern of the waves is a reminder of eternity, of timelessness, and maybe even – sometimes – a way to enter prayer. That’s horrible syntax and doesn’t get anywhere near to what I want to say. I’ll try again, but forgive me if it’s clumsy. Here goes; it was a bitterly cold morning, with a flurry of snow too light to settle, and a biting wind.
We trudged to the rocks and I stood there for a while, watching the waves as the dogs snuffled around the high tide mark, eating sea weed (and things I’m happier not knowing about). My time on the beach is my quiet time. I meet up with a friend, true enough, and then there’s chat and laughter and friendship, but when I’m alone it’s my time with God. That morning it seemed as if the nature of the tides and the constant rhythm of wave upon sand, were an invitation to consider eternity, to look beyond the moment, and to step into the ‘other’, where we can find God. Or maybe where, sometimes, we can see ourselves more clearly, and our place in his creation.
The waves were gentle, the colour of steel, and it was as if they were praying with me, as if they too were praising God, a reflection and proof of his power. Sometimes, living alone, praying alone, instead of feeling solitary there’s a sense of being a tiny part of a wonderful whole, of being ‘at home’, of holding invisible hands, held in an invisible hug. An awareness of God.
The sea seemed to be speaking to me,
at first the gentle swell,
murmuring ‘Reach’ as the swell became a wave,
and ‘Rise’ as the wave filled and formed
then ‘Blade’ as the peak became a beautiful knife edge
‘Curl’ as the water surged forwards, rolling
‘Fall’
‘Break’ as the roll shattered into jewelled surf
‘Sigh’ as the surf laced across the sand
and then, whispering, retreated.
SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME
Reach
Rise
Blade
Curl
Fall
Break
Sigh
Reach
Rise
Blade
Curl
Fall
Break
Sigh
Since the beginning of time.
And that’s where I find the contentment of knowing God, in the understanding that all things change and all things stay the same. Some days are full of incident, scholarships, accidents and commissions. Some friends go. Some friends come. The sun rises, the sun sets. The tide rises and the tide falls. But God is constant, unchanging, eternal. And he is in control. ‘In him all things hold together’. (How I love that simple truth)
And all will be well because ‘All things work to the good for those who love the Lord.’ ( I couldn’t resist finishing it after all)
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has put thoughts of the forever in man’s mind, yet man cannot understand the work God has done from the beginning to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (New Life Version)
Post Script
My oldest dog, Pip, has always been a little bit needy and now she has started to object when my back is to her and I’m working. She paws at my leg until I pick her up and then tries to clamber on the desk, and so – of course- I’ve done exactly as she demands and put a wrap next to the keyboard for her. Now I have half a desk, a keyboard at a strange angle and no room at all for notes. It’s a little bit like my nights, when Percy is at my head, Pip is in the small of my back, and Pico is on my feet. Me? I’m the one clinging on to that piece of piping at the edge of the mattress.
Luce thinking 
“The colour of steel” – brilliant. Lovely strength in this blog. “Everything is like the ocean I tell you everything swells and intermingles” – from another Christian writer, Dostoevsky. Luce the snow looks so cold! Brrrr! xxx
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Dosto blinking evsky? What a nerve that man has! Tell him to keep his thoughts to himself.
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Ha haaaa. He became a writer because once, he was en route to his own execution. And he saw a house with a green roof. It looked so astonishing and wondrous. And he prayed and prayed to God (every single one of his books is about God and Christian redemption) that if he lived, if he was saved, he would become a writer and write about this green roof. And spread the word of God. And just as he was about to step up to the gallows, word came from Moscow that his sentence had been commuted. And that’s why he started to write. The quote about the ocean is from The Brothers Karamazov. He tried to create, in The Idiot, a novel about an actively, truly good man, like Christ, and he was inspired to write this because he saw Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ In the Tomb. He was so profusely angered and viscerally upset by this, the someone had painted Jesus dead, that he wrote a book about how alive Christ is always – and how people laugh at and mock goodness and he wrote it with ferocious passion. So he kept his promise to God, and the green roof. X (Don’t worry, not putting this in the script. Ha haaaa.)
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Stop telling me stuff I know. Tell me something new.
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Hmmm – got me stumped there! x
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Luce sorry to hear about your granddaughters accident, glad she’s ok but obviously very traumatic. Great news about your other granddaughter Your descriptive way with words is just beautiful – thank you Karen x
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My accident.
Thank you
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