Why do we try to train the life out of lovers?

 
INCREDIBLE sunset last night!

 
 

(I have a ritual I love – about 15 – 20 minutes before sunset, I pour myself a nice Chardonnay and walk the forty or so yards to my favorite spot above the crashing Pacific.)

 
“My Bench” sits upon a cliff.  Off to my right, the cliffs are still prevalent but have crumbled where they meet the sea.  There are several well-worn paths winding through the boulders and riprap, allowing access to the sea by the ten to twenty surfers who seek this spot at sunset.
 
Once, I asked a young surfer, “Why is the surf so good here?”  With great self-assuredness he answered, “When you’re out there, in the good spot, you can see the bottom and you can see there used to be a point that came out from the cliffs and as it crumbled, it made the water shallow there.  As the wave energy comes in, it feels the shallow bottom and breaks sooner.”  “Cool,” I said, trying to sound cool.

Right in front of my bench, and running South (to the left,) is a small beach about a hundred yards long, ending abruptly against the cliffs on the South end.  It’s not a smooth, wide beach that’s got it made as beaches go, but a beach that’s had to struggle to get a foothold among these cliffs as evidenced by the many giant boulders littering the beach.  It’s a beach with personality.

Several times a year, the sea sucks all the sand out, uncovering millions and millions of small stones, stones the perfect size and shape for “skipping” across a pond.  When the sand is gone, as it was last week, the arriving surf roils in over these small stones, crashing them together, adding a wonderful sound that’s heard and felt simultaneously.  This morning, the sand was back, evidence of the sea’s never-ending cycle of taking and giving.

I run my hands along the weathered old lumber of my bench, “Hello, old friend,” I think, as I sink into its strong support, shifting the tension in my muscles from supporting me, to being supported.

Oh my God!  The S-M-E-L-L hits me!  The smell of the ocean is incredibly hard to describe.  Each time I experience it, unhampered by memory, is the first time.  It’s so much more than a mere smell, it is not only OF the ocean, it IS the ocean.  It involves more than my nose … it’s visceral … emotional … it’s millions of years of evolution.  It awakens every cell in my body.  It speaks to me in ways I’ve never been spoken to before.  Is it wisdom?  Is it God?  Is it the God in me?  Is it Life?  It feels like all of these.

It is from this spot I love to watch sunset, and make my transition from day to night.  I think I come for counsel, not on any particular thing, just counsel, or maybe I should call it, connection … connection to my spirit?

Sunset is getting earlier now, around 6:15 PM, I think.  The shadows are getting longer, the temperature is changing, we’re entering my favorite time of the year.

I sit, my senses alert, filled with this beauty.  I take a sip of my wine and enjoy the sensation of the wine finding, and awakening the hidden receptors in my mouth.

My transition continues as I slowly become conscious of Her dampness against my skin and Her rhythm, the alternating, sound – silence, sound – silence, of the ebb and flow, the give … and take, of … Her … She is alive.

As the sun drops, a low fog materializes just above the ocean dulling the sun into a diffused orange globe, while the high thin clouds hold the colors long after the sun disappears.

As I totally and completely yield to being in the present with this experience, I see the wonderful metaphor this is for life:

– Continued –