heart sponge
I want to tell you a story about where it began; with a kaleidoscope twinkle of floating pigments underneath the beach towel. Body on warm sand, forever held in a place called heart haven. This is where my earliest memory resides. Tucked safely between the grains. They say reverence is defined as a deep respect for someone or something. To have reverence, senses align. No distraction just presence which is peace. A dance between sunlight shinning through thousands of tightly looped colorful threads and landing on my squinted eye. We play, pigments and I, as old friends, without any expectation or disappointment. Zooming in and out pre camera. Eyes, a technology that can detect a luminance range of one hundred trillion. And when moved, cries. A wetness that tastes like the waves.
Reflection made my skin pink, depth made the blonde hairs on arm a landscape even my mom, blurred in the background walking the shore, couldn’t know. Undercover, the discovery was ours; no one could intervene with our game. If only they knew. What I discovered on the sandy beach at 4 or 5 or 6 was that tears can stretch light. This was the first time I fell in love.
The world between me and something else conversing only through sensation is so much better than anything anywhere else. Afterall, Nature, from water to we, is begging for awe, without getting on hands and knees. It’s the subtle seemingly singular movement that remains a mystery. And boy was I a believer.
There are times when it might not look like much. No 9-5, or 401K or mouths to feed other than plus one dog. She appears napping on the adult couch under a ray of a light as if on the beach as a child. When alchemy is looking for space, whispering, Darling, Let me work you. Not quite digesting, not sleeping, but something else. It was in one of those times that words arrived waking her from the slumber; who am I without the twin. Who am I without the twin marked a new page of my journal.
The twin is not what you think it is, not identical, but of shared DNA, uniquely expressing themselves in a sensual dance. So attuned that if one looks away, they might become lost. An intimate communion between beloved and the best of my self, looks like the absence of time. Something shaped like freedom. Beloved is the light through the colorful beach towel painting a cinematic moment that only I can see. Beloved is his tiny slit eyes when closed that press upon my lips sealing an envelope of devotion.
The trick is not to demigod any person or thing on either end of this relationship. The work of holiness is the attention to something outside ourself and how it makes us feel more ourself. To be of reverence does not mean to be a passive follower. But a co-creator of moment. A curious witness to something that’s the opposite of control. It’s in these moments, where my hand in marriage belongs to now.
This beach girl is the one in bed with you. The one who adores and yearns to be adored. To be lover to the beloved. At times, I have sunk too far into the sand, thinking the head on the pillow next to mine was the answer. Inundated with questions and ideas, it can be difficult to invest in my own mind’s eye, until something breaks. Like the time, after a frizzled moment between him and I side by side, pillow cases touching but we had already lost sight. I said out loud as if it was my last breath - my book. My book. My book. I’m tired of thinking about your fucking life. I need my book to come to life. I didn’t know then what sleeping beauty revealed now, that the fear of someone abandoning me was really just the embodied experience of abandoning myself. This is when I started to fall out of love.
As a spider spinning a web of connection, it can be difficult to resist making an assumed step of prevention but Evolution is more gradual than my impatience can predict. As a kid, fascinated by the unmeasurable setting of a sun, it seemed evident that nature works gradually in ways we can’t quantify - show me an equation that isolates the incremental movements of the yellow sphere kissing the horizon. Sure it gets closer. Sure there are physics. But our eye cannot determine the gradual change. Our heart doesn’t care for math. Look away and return, it’s already 5 feet under. Blink of an eye fast. Like any lifetime according to the stars that brought us here.
The girl on the beach had rituals for every hour. Late afternoon was for playing eye tricks under the beach towel. And before that was intermittent swimming, cookie making on boogie boards with wet sand, jetty walking, dock diving, and maybe most enjoyably collecting seaglass as if it was un-mined diamonds. Kid’s eyes believe the blue specs among the neutral pebbles is the most perfect rare gem. Little did I know sea glass was the result of human intervention. Us plus glass bottles - previously sand - plus salt and time. There was a surfer once, a die hard collector of the dying breed of seaglass, and we did what any pheen would do, we took the best of blue and green bottles, stripped off any label, went out on a jetty, said something and threw them in the ocean. Might seem counterintuitive. As a nature lover. But it’s the relationship that fascinates me. Not Nature as a pristine bubble behind the museum looking glass. No, Nature as my long time lover, the recipient of a message in a bottle. It reabsorbs what is seemingly unnatural, human’s touch on sand and limestone, and gradually without anyone noticing or measuring, spits out something every kid believes is a gift from the ocean. A kind transformation with lots of breaking, turns something hard into something soft. Give it a few more centuries and Nature’s salty mouth will turn it back into sand. Where some descendant will crawl the beach on crushed jewels.
Tiny shells wrapped my exposed belly, one bare foot in front of the other walking the aisle between comrades, to voice my vow and be ordained. I didn’t apply. Don’t believe the Bible. Not part of a denomination. It was a Shamanism workshop during a desperate time despite the salary and good on paper job, that reminded me of where I had been; under the beach towel. A younger man sat across, eyes remained interlocked until tears blurred boundaries. Mirroring as strangers, he said. “You are a grandmother.” That was the beginning of a two year adventure called Interfaith Seminary. There was initial skepticism, as an anti-group-thought outlier, squeamish with anything that resembles a cult. But not here. This was a learning community. Inspiring structure while inviting agency. It was hard, we broke plenty of times, and it softened me. That’s how I can tell. The oceanic measurement of transformation. This is when being love became a slow growth profession.
Our graduating seminary class in 2018 was named UBUNTU. A philosophy bigger than its 6 letter word that sat in my heart and blessed my home since 2015; not long after my grandmother passed. A Nguni Bantu term from South Africa translated from Xhosa or Zulu to mean “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity” or simply I am because you are. The philosophy was gifted to me by a stranger on a bus who offered up his burger before he even took a bite. Imagining the cliffs and interactions my independent travel agent grandmother witnessed decades before from one of her most beloved places in the world, South Africa. She didn’t embody the UBUNTU philosophy with people as much as she did with Nature; but I get to bridge the two. Each generation, as someone once told me, gets to be a little bit better than the previous.
Like following pieces of seaglass and wampum on heart haven as if a trail of decision making, there was a door when desperation knocked, hunger or sadness alike, and someone somewhere opened. My primary job has been to walk through. To gather with intention. Listen to intuition. Act with reverence.
On the last day of our Sustainable Systems course after more hate crime, more virus variants, more staggering climate change statistics, one of my considerate students brought in a box of gathered natural sponges from the ocean. Show and tell for adults. We became kids again, touching, soaking, feeling, sharing story. Studies and sketches were presented as a gift of service to Earth. The gift being attention. Awe for something we didn’t make. But rather something that makes us.
She returns to alchemizing on the couch, allowing stillness to take shape, seemingly separate thoughts to connect tissue, enough for experience to settle and stretch the light inside. Is it possible to cry with eyes closed? Knowing almost for certain that the sponge is where the heart lies. Despite what we may think, aquatic sponges are without spines, but not without skeletons. Their own version of bones. Dense yet porous they are highly adaptable, filter water, collect bacteria, process carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus and can attach to almost anything. Like a twin. In other words, sponges love.
I didn’t realize, until now, the title Reverend comes from the embodiment of reverence. That rev initiates revolution. In Nordic etymology rev is derived from rif or reef; ridge or rock of coral in the sea, where the sponges live. Earth’s underwater hearts. Where it all began.
Photo: Wampum, Heart Haven.