Piles of Rocks

I don't understand it, but I love to pile rocks on top of each other at the beach. I could do it all day. I think I could do it for weeks. I walk along the shore seeking the perfect rocks to build with. I listen to the waves swooshing and the seagulls singing. I smell the salt air and feel the breeze and sunshine on my skin. I build precarious little piles - the more precarious the better. Strange as it seems, this is the most relaxing activity I have ever engaged in.

Last week, on my vacation, we went to Kittery Point Beach one day, which, since it is the place where I most enjoy piling rocks, is my favorite place on earth. We spent quite a while there, and Carl and Orion enjoyed piling rocks with me. (While Steve and Bo enjoyed creating and sharpening prehistoric cutting tools with other rocks.) We made a veritable city of rock piles. These pictures capture only a very few of the structures. We made a whole skyline of dozens of towers and arches along the rocky shore. It kept us engaged for hours, and it continued to hold our attention for days afterward, when one of us would say something like, "I wonder if the rocks are still standing?" or "I wonder how many people noticed them." or "I bet the rock city looked awesome at sunset."
We also spent quite a bit of time trying to name it. Stone Angeles? Stone Vegas? Stoneton-Rouge? That day at Kittery Point (Stonery Point?) was the highlight of my vacation. As I said, I don't understand why I am so drawn to piling ocean rocks on top of each other. But since I absolutely and completely lose track of myself and of time while I'm doing it, I figure it must bring me close to God.

Lenten Thoughts - Week 4

I'm homing in on finishing my latest pair of socks. I started knitting them about when Lent started, and it looks like I'll finish them just about as it ends. This pair of socks has the 2010 Winter Olympics knitted into them, as well as a lovely time of silent retreat. In those stitches are also some wintery Mondays spent by my fireplace, some great Al Anon meetings, as well as a few days of a stomach bug. Knitting is definitely one of my ways of marking time - kind of like a clock that displays the seasons of my life.

I was talking to someone recently about how it seems that our collective sensibilities are becoming so digital these days. The glowing red numbers on a digital alarm clock tell us it's "6:32" as if this moment in time is discreet and unconnected to any other moment. Sometimes it seems our lives are becoming more and more like a collection of discreet unconnected moments, too. Our information comes at us from so many different directions at once in sound bytes and tweets and status updates, we have become used to receiving things in random order, as they come, out of context with the many other bits of information that come our way.

An analog watch or clock, on the other hand, shows the time of day not just as one discreet moment in time, but as a position within a larger context. The second hand sweeps the clockface once a minute. The minute hand goes all the way around in an hour, and the hour hand makes its slow march in twelve hours. Each moment in time is built on the one before it and is headed to the one that is next. Time is even spoken of differently with analog clocks. At 6:32, it could be 'just past 6:30' or 'about twenty-five minutes to seven.

Every couple of weeks, we get the chance to experience more analog time as our knitters, crocheters and needleworkers sit together on Knit One, Pray Too nights. There's a sense of continuity as each stitch brings the pieces we're working on closer to completion. Our digital thoughts pop up and come out of our mouths in a random way. But all our ideas and stories get knit together by the context of relaxed community, and our time together as a group gets stitched into our work. Our group has certainly become a part of this pair of socks I'm knitting.

Time is not really either digital or analog, but a dance of both. Like any dance, there needs to be tension and balance between partners. It seems that at this point in time, digital time is taking a strong lead, but analog time is still dancing. Living a life of faith means exploring the both/and tensions in the world. And it strikes me that the season of Lent itself is a good example of the both/and dance of time. In this season of practicing prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we receive many random experiences of God - sometimes popping up at the least expected moments. But although each day brings many new and unexpected experiences, each passing moment is still one more step in the journey - one more stitch in the sock. At the end, we will be closer to God than when we started, no matter at which point we began, only to discover that God was right there with us all along.