sweet serenity and fellow inmates...

I woke today missing the serenity of my walk on the beach last evening.  The evening shores have become a unique and ethereal place I have found as of late to be alone with my own company and swarming thoughts.  The sky was unusually sinister, darker than I’ve witnessed in the past.  Only a few stars could be made out.  It somewhat matched my mood at the time.  As I approached the beachfront here in Huntington late last night, I walked by two young men who were sitting against their truck with their arms raised above their heads and hands firmly clutched as two police officers searched their vehicle for contraband of some kind.  The two young men stared at me as I walked by in the dark parking lot at the beach, never giving in to the stare-down that ensued between us for that brief moment.  It was strange how much I felt a sense of relation to their circumstance.  Their attempt to hide something was sure to surface eventually, and for them, tonight it washed up on shore for all the world to see who they really were.  It’s such an atrocious feeling; that sense of disappointment in one’s self, while anger rages inside the guilty against those whom you feel are being overly judicious to your circumstance, but deserving.  These two young men will have a lot to think about in the days to come.  Hopefully they will find such a space as I have this past year to be comfortable enough with their own company in order to do business with all that lies beneath the surface of their tough exterior and experience freedom from the noose they weaved day after day, thread by thread for years that they nearly hung themselves with.  I walked the beach at night thinking about such personal transcendence.  The work involved and the time that it takes is never-ending.  I could tell that these young men were pissed off at the world and those in authority, and even at me for staring.  There is perhaps no greater threat and evil than self-deception: It’s cunning and creative, but worse yet, hides in the grottos of all of our hearts, longing to be heard and believed.  We feed it with heaping portions of fear daily.  It grows stronger than who we really are and were meant to be, and sadly, is usually exposed and dealt with once it’s done its harm.  War is nearly impossible to clean up, especially when its internal. 

Well, I woke early this morning (5:30am) and returned to the same site on the beachfront, not wanting to leave my thoughts where they were last evening, dark and gloomy.  Still as ethereal as the night prior, but this time the parking lot was empty.  The truck, the two young men, and the police were nowhere in sight.  The mysterious black sky had lifted, and the sun was rising in response to a much higher power, which always has the last word.  Yap, a new day had dawned.  I stood there praying to the one who had orchestrated such a miraculous, perpetual transition.  I was reminded by that still, small voice that is the same yesterday, today, and forever, that His mercy is, and will always be…new every morning.   There’s a vast difference telling one’s self “good night,” compared to “good morning.”  Both have their intermediary duties in the larger scheme of things, but there is just something extraordinary about the unveiling of a new day and the composition of a new paragraph or brief sentence in the story of mankind, of which I’m glad to be among the living.