Written 7/9/2024

Today I type my thoughts while sitting by the green-gray Atlantic. Ancient undulations roll on and on like Time itself, cascading into new foam as brief and bright as this new morning.

The older I become (this is the last year of my fifties) the more I contemplate the brevity of things. Suddenly—it seems—the kids are grown with lives of their own. The granddaughters are older and smarter every day. Micah, age two-and-three-quarters, carries on a conversation like an adult. She knows what “be brave” means. She will need that attribute in life more than she can know.

I have.

My husband walks out into the waters for a moment. He’s not much of a beachgoer anymore, after all his medical crises in recent years. He’s here because I want to be. Because I need a little salt, a little sun, probably a lot of Vitamin D, and the comfort of this vast continuum. We loved the beach when we were young. Almost thirty-nine years into the marriage, the ocean is personal metaphor, a living promise, ceaseless.

Ever how grounded I may be in my faith, I am not immune to lapses. Today, as I logged on to write this post, WordPress offered a prompt:

What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?

And in my email inbox, a devotion from Our Daily Verse on increasing perseverance.

For me, the key to increasing comfort and perseverance in daily life begins with remembering that God is still God. No matter what. Not merely the limb on which I perch when I’m tired and despairing, but the whole of existence. The true eternal. Generations of our whole human history rise and fall like the ocean waves, and God holds it all.

The sun grows hot. My husband can’t take it for long, and, truth be told, neither can I. Our morning by the sea is brief. We must seek a respite. Somewhere shadowy and green.

I can’t help thinking of forgiveness as a green thing…well-watered with tears, surely, but under its lush canopy, comfort. Rest. Freedom. Peace. As we prepare to leave the shore, my husband and I watch parasailors. How peaceful it must be, so high above it all. I wonder what they hear up there. Here on the ground I hear the ocean’s roar, a strain of cicadas in the scrubby brush, and a baby laughing nearby, playing in the sand.

Some of my favorite sounds on Earth.

Along with the house finch singing as soon as we arrived at the beach this morning. I heard it as soon as I opened the car door. Instantly recognizable. It’s the beautiful song I hear on my front porch every spring and summer. In itself, the sound of perseverance. Of home. It seems to follow me everywhere I go. “Hello, Finch,” I called back to him, perched there in his crape myrtle tree, his little head and breast as red as sunset.

At a recent gathering, my neighbor joked that we’ve reached the time of life in which we just want to watch birds.

There’s comfort in it.

Yesterday while walking through the beach community I saw a green heron. I don’t recall ever having seen one before. A week ago I responded to a fellow blogger, wishing I could have seen the green heron she wrote of, so lyrically.

And one came to me.

The heron and I watched each other for a long awed moment, before she (?) flew to the other side of the pond and I walked on, to let her be.

I contemplate the symbolism of the green heron.

From a biblical perspective, my first go-to, it’s not great. Herons are “unclean” per the Law, i.e., not suitable for consumption, although one resource states that “The very poor of our western and southeastern coast states eat them”(in 1915, that is to say, per the ISB Encyclopedia, written just before the birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act). I wasn’t expecting this, the act or the desperation. It’s been illegal to hunt and kill herons for over a hundred years. Furthermore, the green heron is known to be an irritable, angry bird.

Sounds like some people l know. I don’t want to be one of them.

There are a number of other spiritual meanings associated with the green heron, among them humility, patience, adaptability, wisdom, the ability to focus intently (heaven knows I need this; I used to be better at it than I am now)… and perseverance.

What it really comes down to, however, is how I felt when I encountered this bird. I’d desired to see it, and it came. We were maybe ten feet apart. The heron fixed its bright golden eye intently on me and I was awed. Encouraged. Curious.

It didn’t say anything but I imagine if we spoke the same language, it might have said Be watchful. Be brave. You will persevere. What you need will be provided.

All this in a space of a held breath, in a flutter of green wings, beside the still waters…

I believe. I walk lighter, a wordless green song in my heart.

My green heron

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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge