Eternity

We spend time when we can, at this beach. Early summer we have it to ourselves. Even the flies haven’t found us. The beach is comprised of limestone pebbles and rocks that have been ground into smooth discs with the likenesses of thick pancakes. At this particular beach, unlike the other local ones, there is, interspersed, a large amount of varied smaller rocks, some of which have ended up in my garden at the base of our buddha.

The rocks are a variety of colours from greens to reds, some have lines and layers through them, thread thin, or some are half and half. These patterns have grasped at my imagination, taking me onto that extended journey through time and geologic activity, far below the surface of the earth and even farther back in time.

Very often at the beach I try to have a moment of meditation, with my head in the clouds, contemplating the vastness “out there” in that immense horizon off into the stars way beyond that sun that is warming my skin on these days. I envision myself opening to that expanse to become one with it. (Which I am whether I like it or not.)

But it was on one of those days, eyes wide open, wandering along the beach, my poodle piddling here, sniffing there, and me delighting in the array of gems (I’ll call them) at my feet, that my gaze was taken even farther downward, beneath the surface of the earth and time, to really try to understand the organic connection of me to this world.

I thought, to heck with the spiritual, get familiar with this water and rock from which you crawled. Yes, of course, we are stardust, but between the stardust and my full flesh and blood frame there have been eons of growth, while the whole world, every tree and rock grew alongside, all of us evolving at our own rate. I realized how much I owe to mother earth and how much a child of mother earth I really am. I realized how equal I am to my surroundings, no greater, no less. It was embracing, enlightening and reassuring to know that I really am a part of it.

Like the indigenous say “All my relations,” meaning everything and the spirit within everything. I may be so presumptuous to think I have started to understand what this means, in my own limited way. There, it was a feeling, and elsewhere, as I travel through this world, away from my special beach, littered with magical stones and vibrating with my footprints and my dog’s as well, that it is something so easily forgotten and something I need to remind myself. It is the ground beneath my feet, the air I breath, the trees, flowers, birds, bugs and furry things racing around my yard. It is everything, and it us and we have all arrived and we are here, now.