
Vastness may indeed provide a kind of quieting, a rocking motion. Not just the vastness of the sea (and this Gulf of mine is, in the scale of things, just a small ocean), but the vastness of the beach itself. Unfathomable numbers: the millions of creatures that inhabited the myriad scallop, clam or jingle shells that are still recognizable here, just on my few miles of sand, and the many, many more that once lived in the shells that are, after hundreds or even thousands of years of tossing in the surf, just tiny fragments now. And even further back, the creatures that lived millions of years ago--the ones that left their teeth and bones that have hardened into the fossils we are walking on. (The beach here has a greyish cast because so much of the sand is made of fossil bits). Unfathomable numbers, just of one type: the fossilized shark's teeth, 25 million years old. How many, many, many sharks; how many, many many teeth. And the even more unfathomable numbers of creatures that live between the sand grains (meiofauna--I've written about this before [Feb. 25, 2019], but it is still so awesome, and just because I know about it, it's more less possible to comprehend the numbers beneath my feet, even just this morning). The sand itself, made up of particles of abraded mountains, crystals, and these shells and fossils. Numbers that could only be written as a superscript power which lies far beyond my understanding.
Vastness too in the immediate dramas: the number of sea turtles that have found their way up the beach in the last few weeks to lay and bury their eggs--a most laborious process of lumbering out of the water and digging a seemingly safe hole. (Some females even drop two loads in the nesting season). Very few of the little ones make it, but there is so much effort for those that do. There are thousands of buried turtle eggs on my walk. Thousands just in this stretch of sand, and that's even when the sea turtle population is struggling. Abundance and vastness in so much else around me: the number of leaves in a single live oak, for example, or the way the chaya plant puts out a rash of new leaves in every place it has been cut.
But I digress. This post is focusing on the beach and the morning's walk. The word beatitude came to me, even though I only had a vague sense of what it means. I knew Jesus gave blessings called beatitudes, but I was feeling the energy of the word without any particular association, and it wouldn't let go. The definition, it turns out, is "a state of great joy" --being happy and blessed. Yes, that's it: blessed with a sense of vastness, abundance, the unending quality of the natural world, the whole astonishment of it. Blessed are we all, living here, witnessing, tasting the salt, feeling the sand grains, holding the remains of beings from so long ago and glimpsing the depth of time. Blessed are we all, for we are parts of God and the whole is always in the parts.
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