One day after Christmas

Early on the day after Christmas, I went to Narragansett Beach, at the peak of low tide. The walking is always best for me at low tide, especially during the six months out of the year when I am barefooted. I start this ritual on the first day of April and end it just after Thanksgiving. My aim is to sense through my feet the warming water and the coming of summer as well as the water cooling and the settling in of winter. Once in a while, there is a day out of order when a December afternoon feels more like September, and I take my shoes off and enjoy the cold water until my feet go red and numb. 

But on this morning, the sky gathered a full palette of clouds. The sun was just rising above the horizon so that objects in the distance — gulls flying over the water or a surfer catching a small wave – were backlit, like a silhouette. The beach was empty except for one other walker, and I felt in solidarity with the figure on the paddleboard here in the photo. He was so small set in the landscape of the water and the sky. I wanted to welcome him to the New Land, just a traveler, finally arriving in the beginning of winter, looking for a port before he set sail again. 

I felt very small myself, dazzled by the light.

The metallic shine of the sand and the water. 

The bands of light through the patches of the clouds. 

The mesmerizing shuffle of the waves.

My own breath in concert with the beat of the universe.

Even for just one moment.

That is just enough sometimes.

There is great comfort in recognizing your insignificance, in taking full measure of your size and weight in the universe, not as false humility but as a path to giving proper due to all that came before and that will come again, of all we will never know or understand, of all the possibilities not lived and of all the hearts we will never touch or be touched by. 

I finished that walk on the beach with a little prayer for my tiny soul and for all the foolishness of my young life where after a little study I renounced the works of on faith and went to embrace ideas that were more easily forgotten, readily replaced with others. Until coming full circle, I may arrive where I started, as a babe, just baptized.