Friday 12 August 2016

Intimate and Personal

I read these words the other day and they felt like mine…

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about is the sea.  It contains so many colors.  Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening.  Sometimes it looks almost red.  Or it will turn the color of old coins.  Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere.  White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen.  Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties.  It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.” 

~Anthony Doer, All the Light We Cannot See

I went for a kayak on Cultas Lake today, such a beautiful, amazing, lovely day.  Mountains towering ahead of me, blue sky above with a sliver of moon stationed there waiting for night to fall, standing to the edges where the waves kiss the land were varieties of cedar, oak and maple bending in the breeze…just a light breeze but together with the sun and the reflection of the water I was touched with a rosy glow….ah summer.

I like summer, but more than that I love the water, how it reflects everything around it, sparkling in the sun, dancing in front of the boats and swirling rushing behind leaving wakes of foam and caps causing small boats like mine to bob and dip…I love how my paddles slice through the water, this side and that side, dipping in and pulling me forward over the wakes left by the boats and other times gliding over the smooth and glass like magic…water.

I live by the water, I vacation near it, I float on it and I dive deep down into it…God’s creation isn’t that just like Him, to offer us such beauty to enjoy; to live in, to love.

Water, whether lake or ocean, whether completely in it deep down or floating gently on the top of it is at the same time freeing and personal…and intimate, I think that is what I love most about it.  It’s beautiful if you can share in it with another person, but it’s beautiful alone too.

Today as I glided along I noticed a couple on a paddle board…she was sitting on the back, legs outstretched, propped with her arms behind her and he was at the front standing, dipping the paddle this side and that side.  They were watching me as I was watching them, he smiled and waved.  I smiled back and said “that looks nice” and they said to me “that looks nice too.”

Intimate and personal, big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel


I love that.