Conversations with a Soul (24 page)

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, and you must not be abased to the other. . . . .

. . . . . There is that in me — I do not know what it is — but I know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty — calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep — I sleep long.

I do not know it — it is without name — it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death — it is form, union, plan — it is eternal life — it is Happiness. . . .

. . . Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
⁶⁸

The privilege of a life time is being who you are.
⁶⁹

Some moments of insight, born in a flash or honed over many years, arrive infused with a radiant, numinous quality. We awake one day to suddenly see the world as a glorious
work in progress,
and the seeing coaxes something extravagant to life. We believe that nothing is impossible, no doors irrevocably closed, no choices irredeemable. Claimed by a kind of
La Mancha
madness we ride forth in pursuit of a dream.

Unfortunately, such dreams are vulnerable things, and the clarity of the vision slowly fades; distorted by the persistent demands of what others want from us, and the strident claims of what we perceive as the
urgent,
and our acquiescence to the whining insistence of the
trivial,
which everywhere and everyday undermines our deepest commitments.

Yet once birthed, such insights may fade but they do not easily die. Instead, they hide themselves amongst the prosaic and commonplace, patiently biding their time, until, illuminated by a sudden shaft of light, they come alive again. Rich with possibilities they tumble forth, reigniting the imagination, revealing, enlightening, and demanding to be integrated into our understanding of how things
really are or how they might become.

Such epiphanic experiences frequently initiate powerful surges of despair, as we look at what we have done with our lives and equally powerful yearnings for a different, richer quality of life; either way, thereafter, the world can never be the same again. Such moments of insight are sometimes birthed at the beach at Marsh Corner.

Marsh Corner is bounded on its westerly side by a great sweep of the Pacific Ocean; to the north and east, a preserve of native plants and grasses; to the south, the pristine eighth hole of the Spanish Bay Golf Links.

Where the Seventeen Mile Drive takes a left turn and heads south alongside the ocean, the Pebble Beach Company thoughtfully paved a small area and created a parking lot.

The lot is without a name or other descriptive title but you can’t miss it, and to every passer by the place extends an invitation:

Get out of your car; forsake the comfort of soft leather seats and air conditioning. Pull on a parka or sweatshirt; set your feet free from the imprisonment of those fine lace-up leather shoes and, barefoot, come, venture beyond the car park, beyond the boardwalk, down to the beach where tiny wavelets carve intricate patterns in the sand. Come and play!

A scattering of rustic benches and tables even goes so far as to suggest a picnic, much to the delight of foraging seagulls.

Unfortunately, summoned by far more serious business, most visitors ignore the invitation. A slow drive through the parking area is enough to satisfy their curiosity and soon they are off in pursuit of that which brought them here in the first place.

At one of the entrance gates to Pebble Beach a Ranger relieved each driver of $9 - the prescribed fee for the privilege of cruising along the 17 mile Drive. Most visitors seem quite content to hand over their money, for who would quibble over a measly nine dollars when such a paltry sum buys you bragging rights to having taken a ride on a world famous stretch of road. Furthermore, you’ve bought the right to ogle at legendary mansions and fantasize about how the wealthy live;
and
, with a bit of luck, you might even catch a glimpse of one of the many film stars, rumoured to live alongside the ocean and who occasionally frequent the restaurants and pubs of downtown Carmel; although it should be noted that there are generally far more rumours than actual sightings.

The drive offers some spectacular scenery but, like the beach, pausing to view sea swept landscapes demands a commitment of time and people on a mission never seem to have enough time, certainly not enough to squander frolicking at the water’s edge or gazing at timeless vistas. After all, the scenic views will still be there tomorrow when the film stars have gone back to wherever film stars go when they leave home!

Yet, is has been whispered, that those who surrender to the siren call of the beach at Marsh Corner, who take the time to get out of their cars and explore this laughing, rolling, screeching, wheeling, wave chasing, kite flying, sand castle building, family picnicking, friendship bonding place, find that it has a mysterious way of making inroads to the heart.

There’s something here that goes far beyond the cost of an entrance fee.

Families, large and small, generally, although not always, with children, with or without dogs of various sizes and ancestry, instantly find themselves transported to a wonderland.

For a short while the beach becomes their whole world and the shrieks of playing children, the cries of birds, the ever present rumble of the ocean breathes fresh life into jaded relationships and invites a conversation that could lead to warmth and intimacy and a new beginning.

When finally, and reluctantly, the day ends and they make their way home, sandy and sun-burnt, they leave nurturing far greater rewards than those that can be gleaned from the poverty of gazing at walled-in estates posted with signs warning the curious to stay out.

Some of them will even start to work on priorities for their short journey through time, thereby taking the first steps on a pilgrimage to find the holy grail of tranquil sanity.

The lure of Marsh Corner has about it an almost mystical quality, hard to define and impossible to manufacture, yet generally shared and freely given away by beaches everywhere.

Gazing out at the ocean, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, I’ve suddenly been embraced by a moment of wonder and I knew that the beach was calling out to my Soul.

Frequently it all starts with a sense of yearning. I feel my Spirit crying out for something. I know myself to be on a
quest for answers to deep rooted internal hungers
. Particularly at sunset, I look to the light caught in a slowly tumbling wave, or the soft colours reflected in clouds, or the gentle settling of the sun, or the long orderly flights of birds heading home, or any one of a dozen images which belong to the beach, there to find something that is deeply satisfying and rooted in a quality of permanence denied to the rest of my living.

Here’s a world that addresses my longing for wonder, dependability and beauty, and I see evidence that I am not the only one.

I see a fellow walker borrowing a bench and staring at the horizon. She tells me she just needed to talk to God about her troubled world, and I agree with her, for this place has a way of extending such invitations.

I see a man and a woman, standing hand in hand, just watching the ocean and the wheeling, playing flocks of birds. Not a word passes between them yet I understand that a deep conversation is in process. Later they will share with each other the ideas and feelings that came to them, and not be at all surprised that the other had exactly the same thoughts.

Car loads of families stop and search for sea otters. They crane their necks to watch a flock of gliding pelicans, and when someone spots a whale spout, they are eager to have family and friends share in the experience.

So important, so momentous, is that sight, they seem to want everyone to become a part of
their
circle, to see and experience what they have just seen. Without any encouragement they invite unnamed strangers to share the moment:

Did you see it? Now keep your eye on the near horizon, right there about two o’ clock, there . . . . . there did you see it?

And they are left with a sense of having experienced something magnificent. For a few radiant moments they understand that being alive is, sometimes, about being grasped by wonder.

Reluctantly they move on yet the moment, made all the richer by sharing it with others, lingers to create and nurture new dreams.

Mothers and fathers seem particularly anxious to have their children see and enjoy the richness of the moment, and they act as if this
is really important!
They intuitively seem to understand that the beach is offering them a gift.

Then they are off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to stand in wonder at the outer bay exhibit, again compelled to have their children share in the feeling of awe, which is the gift of the deep water world.

We need an engagement with a world of beauty in order to satisfy huge hungers that arise from the world within.

The corollary to all this is that something different and terrible happens to people who are denied this engagement and whose world shrinks to the sweatshop or the slum, or the hollow shell of a marriage, or the wretched tiny apartment, whose only window looks out upon a wall patterned by sewer pipes and made grimy through neglect.

People denied immersion in something beautiful begin to die from the inside out. In all of us there is need of a dialogue, a rendezvous, an exchange between our life and the life that goes on all around us.

Even unaccompanied men and women, most having spent the prior week in business meetings, quickly fall under the spell of the beach at Marsh Corner. You can find them sitting by themselves, gazing out at the horizon, held captive by something significantly more important than spread sheets, business plans and sales techniques.

Conjured-up by the sounds of the surf, whispered through a pang of loneliness, coaxed to life through rich memories and nurtured in the anticipation of a return to a place called home; come the voices and the faces of loved ones; and in that moment, they know themselves to be the richest people in the whole world.

There’s a wonderful commonality about beaches everywhere. Maybe it is true that some part of our corporate memory retains a primitive yearning for a home that is not too far from where water and sand embrace each other.

Sometimes it is nothing more sophisticated than that in moments when sanity claims us, and we are set free to respond to the child within, we experience all over again a yearning to shed our business suits and play in the sand, for in play we are recreated. Or maybe it is because the beach insists we jettison our sacred duty to constantly prove ourselves by being productive, demanding instead that we yield to the joy and wonder of simply being alive; or maybe it is because, suddenly it dawns on us that we’ve grown weary of the lies, the manipulation and the deceit which plague our relationships, and we want a fresh start.