high tide.

This morning the beach was gone.  High tide and a weekend of storms in New England forced giant slaps of ocean to the shore, covering the sand and splashing over the height of the seawall.  One wetsuit-clad surfer paddled around in the violent waves, but the rest of us walked along the sidewalk, sometimes shielded by the seawall, sometimes getting sprayed or doused as stories-high waves leapt over, bringing rocks, seaweed, and sand to the street.  Rocks collected between the cars parked along the seawall, and we shivered in our coats and hats as we picked up a few stones, to remember the day the ocean spoke.

It said, "Stop condescending me.  I'm not just beautiful, calming, and picturesque - I'm alive, and I am restless."

To prove its life, and power, and force, and choice, it threw things back on the beach that had once been thrown in: a sneaker, a child's shoe, dozens of pieces of Styrofoam, and several mangled lobster traps.  It didn't want these things - they were no good for the ocean, and the ocean knew it.

"It's a good day for a beach cleanup," I said.  But I kept walking.  Who wanted trash?  Was moving it from the sand of the beach to the dirt of the landfill really helping?  If I buried it in the sand here, could we call it even?  As long as it's covered up, it's not there...right?

It seemed that in its violence (provoked only, it seems, by pressure systems in the air, or however the Weather Channel explains it), in its tumultuous somersaulting, slapping, leaping, pushing, breaking, and retreating, the ocean's worst was exposed.  A purge, of sorts, and it's easy to understand the physical need to purge - the body constantly refuses things it does not want, reminding us again and again that everything is not for consumption.  The body needs cleansing.  What struck me about the ocean's refusal of these things is that it took this storm - this intensity of wave and salt and foam - to reveal all that is unwanted.  Such a fit, such a temper, that ocean.  But a fit of necessity, as if the ocean had no other way to cleanse itself than to rear up on its hind legs and roar. 

Beyond the body - the heart, the soul, the mind - how are these purged for cleansing?  Confessing, either to God, to a friend, to a parent, or to the self when we are alone and try to think of nothing while the garbage distracts us.  There's the verbal processing, talking things through so as to discard what we do not actually think or believe while getting to the root of who we are.  And then there's rest.  In sleep, our minds storm like the sea, bringing up the mangled lobster traps that we didn't want to think about, or didn't even know were there.  The old shoe that someone left by accident, whether we wanted to remember or not.  A fitful sleep brings all these things to shore, and they are left on the sand when the tide recedes and we wake. 

I also believe in cleansing through peace.  In quiet reflection, meditation, prayer, true stillness.  There are some things that simply sink when we are still, and do not disturb the waters.  Things that may have seemed to be as disruptive as a lobster trap, but were in reality no more than a floating leaf, or a shell that finds a place in the sand and is allowed to stay.  When these lighter things have drifted away, we have clarity, seeing straight through to the bottom, to the sides, to the sky where the sun reflects like gold on the surface.  And in that clarity, that vision, that gold from above, there is joy, and in joy, peace. 

I want to return to the ocean when the weekend storms have ceased, when there is peace and stillness again.  I want to see what has been purged, what has floated away, and what remains.  I want to hear the ocean speak again, sighing, "Peace be with you." 

And also with you.