Your heart spoke to mine;
Humility is beauty
I cannot forget.
The one place the clouds don't bother me...
the threat of rain seems exciting because of all the movement--
the beach, the bay, the breeze, the waves, the flags flying, fluttering,
like a girl with her face set like flint,
breathing easier than she ever has before for the wind in her face, in her hair.
The world seems beautiful and right,
even with the chaos surrounding.
The gulls and pelicans glide and dive.
The waves splash like little geysers on the old, wooden sea walls
and tree roots laid bare like underground castles revealed by the eroded banks.
I wonder what you would think of all this.
I wonder if you have experienced what I did.
Did your grandmother bring you to the bay like mine did,
those magical Mobile summers when everything seemed whole and right
before the gathering clouds taught you to fear, and falsely?
Can the endless breaking, falling, crashing be a strong, unbroken rhythm of existence that gives us hope and allows us to "try, try again" at something our families couldn't hold to?
Have we been given what they had not?
Can we push beyond the feelings and glimmers of pleasure that masquerade as love?
Can we plumb its depths and know its true character?
Can we discover a deeper delight in the midst of chaos and mystery and pain?
Can we discover the order set from the beginning by the maker whose Name is Love?
You may think it odd and startling that I should suggest such things to a boy I only just met.
But, your heart spoke to mine like few others have.
And humility is beauty I cannot forget.
Your life has been very different than mine, but your heart seems rather akin.
The outward appearances revealed something real... much, much deeper within.
And I want to discover what that is.
But here I am on a small, sleepy beach in the deep, deep South where the days are lazy and hot.
And there you are, thousands of miles away
by the big, deep, and frightening blue ocean in a bustling metropolis under a cloud.
And I'm unsure how to bridge that distance-- to enter into your quiet inner world free from the fetters of technology that claims to unite when, really, it keeps us separated.
And yet...
I will probably read this in a few weeks and think myself insane for writing to you like this,
but here on this cloudy, breezy morning by the other bay that I think we both know, it seems appropriate.
You saw the ocean and were compelled enough to follow it-- to move your whole life to be beside it.
In this moment, I feel compelled to move my whole life to discover who you are-- but how?
Even as I write these words, I feel crazy.
But everything has changed.
Three and a half days by your bay, and I feel like everything has changed.
You are not what I expected, and yet everything in me changed.
What a beautiful, humble, nervous, fearless soul.
I wonder how like Francis you are.
I wonder what you would do if you wanted to know me too.
Even if these words come to nothing in the way of connection, I desire that love for you as I desire it for myself...
to know and experience what our parents could not.
To live out the promises of the Creator set firm for us.
To discover their depths-- their meaning, even as we are swept about on the seemingly angry seas.
The ocean is beautiful, dark, and deep,
and I pray that our promises we could keep,
leaning into that ocean of grace that sweeps ever under us and beckons us to let go...
to dance upon the waves with reckless abandon,
knowing deeply and passionately that we are not in control...
but that Love is.
(July 3, 2019 | Feast of St. Thomas, apostle | Fairhope, AL, on the beach...)
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