ST JOHN DREAMED of heaven’s being a place “where there is no more sea” – Revelation 21.1 I wonder why? Danger? Unknown depths? Just a personal dislike for the ocean? I’ve always loved to be near sea. I can hear it, here, now. It was navy blue and white and turquoise when I looked a few moments ago. But the scene is always on the move. Swell. Ebb. Flow. Colours constantly changing. Deeper, richer hues. Sun shining, then, for a moment, behind a young white cloud.
Close your eyes against bright light and colour’s echoes are merging, richer, ranging. Dark reds through oranges, and gold. Vistas, like the paddlers at the water’s edge, come and go. Life is arriving and passing, arriving and passing, like the ocean’s ebb and flow. Contemplation. Twenty minute meditation. I give back the swell, “the life I owe, that in thine ocean’s depths its flow may richer, fuller be”. For
You, you only, exist. We pass away, till at last, our passing is so immense that you arise: beautiful moment, in all your suddenness, arising in love, or enchanted in the contraction of work.
To you I belong, however time may wear me away. From you to you I go commanded. In between the garland is hanging in chance; but if you take it up and up and up: look: all becomes festival!
Rainer Maria Rilke
Perhaps it’s not that John didn’t like the sea. More that he was dreaming, or recalling having dreamed to be more precise. And he’d been given a vision of a whole new shape to life, a new architecture, a new depth to the soul’s awareness of relationship to God, to our Source, to the Beginning and the End, to one another. New start. New gladness. New heart.
But rather than crashing into this awareness we dream ourselves – or pray ourselves – into it. Ebbing and flowing. Living. Loving. Dying. Rising. We’re living a passing that is a birthing, a colouring, a crying, a dying, a hearing, a learning, a listening, a loving, a painting, a poem, a praying, a resting, a rejoicing, a seeing, a shaping, a sleeping, a smelling, a smiling, a sorrowing, a sculpting, a testing, a tasting, a touching, a trying, a waking, a working: bejewelled box of words …
till at last, our passing is so immense that you arise: … all becomes festival
Today’s task then? Eternity’s task. To be, to pass, to smile, and to revel in being swell and ebb and flow. You, only you, exist …
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Fuerteventura, Spain
No more night too. I’d miss the stars – and the chance to rest and sleep! Another great post Simon. We used to have a pair of sisters in my parish who we called Ebb and Flow. Not sure they were so swell though.
Hey David. Thanks. I’d miss night-time too. Dinner, a couple of chapters, and a long sleep. Then again, there’s bound to be lots of as yet unimaginable fun to be had when we’re not hungry or tired …