The Balance of Beachdwelling and Wavelistening

Soft crashes of symbols etch meaning into the papyrus paper of our heartscrolls.
Sign language. Choreography.

Is it worth being aware of what's below the surface and meditating on the sound of the surf,
depositing, eroding?

We're beachdwellers, and god's water washes our shores
in an omnipresent backdrop of sound,
sibilantly hissing in the language of the soul.
Uninterpretable. Mysterious.

Similar to a sunrise
or the sudden emptiness of a lifeless body,
it doesn't mean something in any of the ways we might think it does.
Beyond imagining.

Our lives are played out amidst this perpetual aural presence of truth,
a truth well beyond the most limber contortions of the most flexible minds.
Intelligent design.

It's a choosable thing, to what degree
we consciously contemplate incomprehensible compositions.
We can go about our lives without considering these vibrations,
trusting that whatever song the waves are singing
will carry us across the water when it's our time to go
or we can turn our attention towards these undecipherable divine orchestrations now,
amidst our busy beachdwelling lives.
Preference.

Those who choose to tune in need to learn how to listen,
most especially the many children who have come of age in cookiecutter classrooms,
disconnected from the wisdom of our ancestors.
Our foremothers knew how to not make sense of our womblike soundscape
but many of today's curriculums were designed by people with gargantuan, cube-shaped minds,
so most modern schools insist of making straight lines and sense out of everything.
Yesterday's people knew well what it's up to us to remember:
if you try to listen to love that way,
it will drive you mad.
Surrender.

Beyond archetypes, riddles, enigmas, and even poetry,
the voice of the blood spiraling through the veins of our universal body
speaks to us in no language.
Wonder. Curiosity.

A recollection of forgotten wisdom
will allow today's listeners to lean towards the waves once again.
Ancestral instincts will save our sanity
if we would strive to balance the roles of beachdweller and wavelistener,
if we would seek to hear the sirensong of those soft symbol crashes
without being swept away from those we love,
if we desire to simultaneously reside in that space beyond mind
yet still go to work and have a chat around the water-cooler.
Equilibrium. Moderation.

Were our ancestors still around,
an unbroken chain of tutelage would allow us to tap in and walk the delicate tightrope
but the tradition of sitting at the feet our our elders has,
for so many families,
been broken.
Forgetfulness.

Fortunately, the original source of inspiration still exists untarnished.
Pure.

Our task today is perhaps less simple than it was for those in ages past,
for while the whispers instructing us on how to listen to the sound of the surf
(whispers which (thankfully) are themselves intelligible)
have never stopped murmuring out their hushed instructions
the sounds of our communal life on the beach have gotten louder and louder,
practically drowning the whispers out.
Cacophonous. Deafening.


We still find ourselves surrounded by the sound of the surf,
for that is the soundscape in which we exist
and no amount of manmade noise, no matter how loud,
could ever overpower creation itself.
But with the loss of the voice of our ancestors
the whispers guiding us on how to listen
have become barely discernible,
so that many who might be inclined to become the wavelisteners of today
have no idea how to begin
and end up struggling to tune out
those wavesounds which seem to make no sense.
Deadening. Half/life.

So: a less simple task, given the escalating crescendo of our busy beachdwelling lives,
which means the well-earned reward
of rediscovering the whispers
which will teach us how to listen
will taste that much sweeter.
Attainable.

The original stream of inspiration from which our ancestors
drew cupfulls of wisdom and drank,
the calm stream whose source is the great
wavesinging surfsounding unintelligible ocean of god itself,
the peaceful stream whose clean waters were taken in by the bodies
of those who gave birth to those who gave birth to those who gave birth to us,
the stream which has given rise to the wisdom
which has guided generation after generation
as they learned to walk in two worlds,
the stream which has the power to teach humanity
how to be both beachdwellers and wavelisteners...
this stream still flows in the same place it always has.
Within us.