There is a peculiar feeling one gets, as one stares out across the Narrows straight from the shores of Bay Ridge toward the hill sides of Staten Island and the shores of industrial New Jersey beyond. It’s almost like the feeling you get as you stare out toward Sausalito from under the Golden Gate bridge. And just a little like the the sight of the islands that dapple the Dalmatian Coast. It’s like the water just beckons you to cross the open flat so that you can explore the land beyond. It’s not that you really want to be on the land though. It’s like you just want to be crossing the water. It’s like the water would be this amazing thing to be out on. If people regularly walked on water, it would be scenes like these that preceded every step.
And there is something odd about the open water that I have always felt upon encountering it. I always think of water as freedom. Maybe it’s some distant childhood memory that fuels this feeling. There were always two major destinations for vacations, when I was growing up. Either the sea or the mountains. And while the mountains were closer, and were always majestic, they never held the same sway over me that the sea held. The sea was always bigger, and maybe more monstrous, but always it as freer. The sea always made the world feel like it was full of boundless possibilities. One summer I managed to visit both the coast of California and the coast of Virginia. I loved staring out as far as the eye could see. And I loved thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could see land just at the edge of the horizon. The sea always made me think that nothing could limit me, maybe just because I thought I could see forever.
And I wonder how, in the day to day of our lives, our sense of what lies ahead contributes to our overall sense of ourselves. There are, of course, many religious answers to the question, “What next?” Anything from the apocalypse, whether the one that John wrote, or the many mystic visions and interpretations of it, reincarnation perhaps, nothing at all … One of the major Christian answers is reconciliation. I suppose it’s actually my favorite. There is this promise that one day all of the mis-fitting, ill-timed, broken actions of this world will act in harmony.
Maybe, as someone who has never witnessed a terrible ocean squall, the open water seems to represent peace and harmony to me. It seems to present this whole notion that eventually we might just be fruitful and multiply, we might just have boundless opportunities when this whole creation does finally give birth, and maybe we won’t have to struggle against so much brokenness.
But in the meantime, we have, as Christians, this ministry of reconciliation. And so we are called not to smooth things over, but to bring harmony to the cacophonous chaos of this world. That’s something I want to do.
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