SCENES FROM THE SEASHORE

INTROCUCTION

The title of my reflection is, “Scenes from The Seashore.”

The other day on “All Things Considered” on National Public Radio, the host, Melissa Block, said that they are once more going to offer a feature for the summer season: “Sounds of Summer” or something like that.

I don’t know if it’s going to be weekly or what have you. Well anyway I listened up. The host said they asked different writers to offer their remembrances of sounds of summer from their lives.

I found it very interesting. The four I heard were the clink of beer bottles by 17 year olders, the sound of a skate board, the sound of thunder in a summer camp for kids in Maine. The one that triggered the strongest memory for me from a gal who talked about growing up in the Bronx. In the summer it was no air and pllenty of muggy, hot,  heat . All the windows were obviously open. In came the sound of boom boxes, kids screaming in the streets, basketball games, hydrants opened illegally – and then the wonderful sound of Mr. Softee – the bells from an ice cream truck. It was opera. It was magnificent. It was just perfect.

Driving along I wondered if they would run out of sounds of summer. I wondered if they did this every summer or what have you.

FEAST OF ST. JUSTIN

Today. June 1st,  is the feast of St. Justin the Martyr [c. 100 - 167]. Justin, a philospher, met an old man in Ephesus as he was walking along the seashore. The old man, a Christian, told Justin that he couldn’t come up with knowledge of God without divine revelation – and especially that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophets. Justin had studied the Stoics, Plato, the Pythagoreans, this and that, but it was by that comment from the old man at the seashore which triggered life changing events for him. He ends up becoming a great Christian philosopher, theologian, speaker and thinker.

SCENES FROM THE SEASHORE

Then it struck me – then I made a connection, “Hey next year or some other year, National Public Radio, could ask folks to come up with scenes from the seashore – scenes from the summer beach – ocean – waves – water – moments that had an impact on one's life.

Throughout history – there have been dramatic life changing scenes in people’s lives – that came from moments of revelation at the seashore or at sea.

I thought of Augustine meeting the little boy at the beach who wa trying to put the ocean in a pail - and Augustine telling him he couldn't do that. The countered that he could do it easier than for Augustine explaining the Trinity. That brought back memories of scenes of hundreds of kids at the beach in the summer with shovel and pail in hand. I thought of Hemingway’s Old Man and The Sea – which won him a Pulitzer Prize for literature. I thought of Moby Dick. I didn’t think of Jaws.

Then I found myself as a kid Coney Island, Brooklyn. It was summer. It was paradise. It was everyday. It was family. It was water and sun and sunburn and blisters on my shoulders and being warned to “Cover up!” It was having a Nathan’s hotdog and their orange drink before the long subway ride home with sand in our sneakers and the feel of salt water still on our skin. It as was the Bay 18 section of Coney Island where “our kind of people settled in”. It was the raised water fonts on the sand – cool, clear, delicious water for us at any time. It was the ropes and 3 red barrels out in the water to protect us in between the rock jetties – and then the wide open sea.

I remembered the story of a man who told me he had no faith till one morning on vacation he was walking the beach. It was way before all his family rose. He saw the sun rising in the east –up out of the ocean – and Christ the Son of God – rose in his life – and all changed.

It remembered reading the book, The Star Thrower (1978) by Loren Eisely about the man who walked the beach every morning tossing star fishes that landed on the beach back out into the ocean to save them.

I began thinking about the reality that for 7 years of my life right, I lived right on the ocean – in a retreat house. The ocean was to be seen every day – at any time – but after my first 6 months stationed there – the ocean began to become unnoticed – triggering thoughts that can the same can happen with a new baby, a marriage, becoming a Catholic, Eucharist – prayer or what have you.

CONCLUSION

Today take some time to think about your sounds of summer and your scenes from the seashores you have walked. Amen.