We Go to the Sea
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When my dad was a kid, his father had a stroke. Everyone in their church clucked their tongues. It’s too bad, they said, that God had seen fit for that to happen.
My grandmother got busy praying even harder than usual. She was determined that the four children still at home would be cleansed in body and spirit, so, on the advice of her pastor, she reluctantly but regularly whipped the children. As she said, “I’m doing this for the sins I don’t know about—but God does.”
My grandfather, a bricklayer by trade, was now physically unable to work much. This meant there usually wasn’t much money and there often wasn’t much to eat. Their shabbily constructed house sat by itself deep in rural Indiana, and when winter came, the water pipes, which had been laid too close to the surface of the ground, would freeze. To get the nearest available water my eight-year-old dad and his younger brother would have to go out in the bitter cold and harness a goat to a cart. They’d lead the goat and cart up a steep hill to my great-grandparents’ house, where they’d fill three buckets with water, put them on the cart, and then traipse back down the hill again. As you can imagine, neither my father nor my uncle (nor the goat) enjoyed this process.
One winter brought with it a terrible blizzard. The power went out, the pipes were, of course, frozen, and the goat had somehow gotten out of his pen, never to be seen again. Despite all those concerns, all my dad could think of was how the members of their church would say that it was somehow his family’s fault. “Why has God done this to us?” he wailed. “What did we do to deserve this?”
My grandfather, who had rarely spoken since the stroke, gave him a long look and then wrinkled his forehead. He cleared his throat, shook his head, and said, “Enough.” There was a long pause while the family stared. “Enough,” he said again. “We go to the sea.” And that’s exactly what they did.
With most of their meager belongings in one suitcase, four children and two adults—none of whom had ever laid eyes on the sea—set out in a rusted car that had seen better days. They drove for three days and nights. They drove out of the snow and ice and spent every last dollar they had saved eating at roadside restaurants along the way. And at the end of the journey, there was the sea.
My dad never knew why his father took them to the sea at that moment. Maybe he had always wanted to go and maybe it seemed like the perfect place to escape to when things got too bad. Whatever the reason, it ended up being the right thing to do. To hear my dad tell it, that first moment when the blue expanse of sea opened up before him was breathtaking. But it was more than just a feast for the eyes. Camped out at the warmth of the seaside over the next several days, away from the voices that had caused so many wounds amongst them, the family began to heal from what they had been through.
Their struggles didn’t magically go away, and neither did the scars from their wounds, but with each turn of the tide, my dad said, something inside him began to smooth over, and he decided that a God who could be part of this ocean—majestic and cooling and soothing and teeming with life and glimmering darkness and wonder—that God would not have caused his father’s stroke, or the terrible blizzard, or been complicit in whatever had happened to the poor goat.
Those memories of the family spending time together at the seashore stayed with my father through the years. He returned to the sea many times, and so I grew up with the sea as a place of healing to return to again and again. And now I live by the sea, and in looking out at the waves, I see all the pain and possibility of the world we live in. For the vast mysterious ocean—filled with mountain ranges whose heights surpass the Alps, with volcanoes and ten-foot tall tubeworms—remains more unknown and shrouded in secrecy than Mars or Venus.
Like the sea, we humans are shrouded in mystery in many ways. We act and think and feel for reasons that are often as unknown as they are known. While some of us may like to believe we’re rational creatures—and we certainly don’t want to discount our ability to reason—the truth is that we are also irrational creatures, often acting out of pain and not even aware of it.
Too often—and I know I’m guilty of it—we forget to take the time to think about where we come from, the experiences we’ve had, the things that have shaped us. Too often we don’t take time to fully heal from our wounds, and that’s why I say that our faith communities have to intentionally make space for that healing to happen.
For there isn’t a person reading these words who hasn’t been hurt at some point. And so when we come together in our church communities, we must always acknowledge that we come from many places and many experiences. While, at times, we may have ridden joyfully atop the waves of life, at other times we have been pulled under those same waves, scraped across the rocks, left gasping for air.
Wounds come from many places. They might have been from our family or neighbor or partner who said we weren’t worthy. It might have been from the loss of people from death or distance. It might have been from illness or job loss or money troubles or anxiety about what tomorrow may bring. It might have been from the larger oppressive social systems that have beaten us down along the way, systems that have ignored us or even punished us for being our authentic selves.
Many of us still carry around these wounds, some of them still as fresh and painful as when we first received them. And, of course, every day there are opportunities for fresh lacerations.
It’s understandable that some might think that instead of focusing on healing, our time would be better served out in the world, actively fighting for justice. In a world of self-help books and “selfies” and beauty products and glossy magazines, the idea of spiritual healing can seem like another trip on the self-indulgence train. (And I’m not knocking self-indulgence; we can all use a little of it every now and then.) But the notion of spiritual healing is more than a passing fad. It’s been with us throughout our history as Unitarian Universalists.
I think back to early Unitarians in New England. They balked at the old way of thinking—that only some pre-ordained people could be saved. Instead, Unitarians championed the idea that people can find salvation through doing good work in the world. What a healing balm this was, soothing those wounds that came from never feeling good enough!
Meanwhile, Universalists were offering their own healing balm in the notion that if God is a loving God, then that means all humanity will ultimately be reconciled with that divine love. There was no hell, no damnation, no eternal punishment, none of that nightmarish stuff that had scarred so many along the way. From then to now, Unitarians and Universalists have offered healing for wounds from the fear of not being good enough, not being worthy enough, not being loved enough—issues that still plague people today.
You might think the rationalism of Humanism would seem a far cry from the more emotive notion of healing, but it, too, brought with it opportunities for profound healing. Humanism values the ability of human beings to reason, to take action, to have agency over their lives. In a world where systems of oppression were becoming more and more subtle and insidious, this emphasis on humanity’s capacity for transformation was curative stuff indeed. It encouraged people to not just live with their wounds, but find ways to actively mend brokenness.
It’s no accident that healing has underscored our movement. I believe it was an instinctive response to this faith’s call for transformation. Healing was necessary then and is certainly necessary now for us to be able to do the work of Unitarian Universalism: transforming ourselves and the world for the better. It’s necessary to heal our wounds because if we don’t, we can too easily forget that we do not ride the waves of the great ocean of life alone, and we can become engulfed in a tidal wave of isolation.
It is necessary to heal our wounds so that when we come face to face with the realization that no community is perfect—that we are all human and we are all flawed—we will be strong enough to hold each other with loving care and not drown in a flood of old pain. And finally, it’s necessary to heal our wounds so that our eyes can be open to joy, open to the awe and wonder of a vast universe that cradles us in multitudinous possibilities of love.
And when we are able to stand in this space of awe, when we are able to feel a deep connection to one another, when we can hold both our joy and our pain with grace, then we can truly do the work needed to build beloved community. Our wounds will always be present, but there can be healing. Scars will remain, but when we work for justice, we will wash them clean with the love that pours over us like waves.
And how do we do this healing? The answer is simple—at least simple to say, if not to do: we make space for it. Just as the sea is comprised of both water and salt, so, too does our faith community consist of both joy and pain. We must acknowledge the reality of that pain, for we need the buoyancy this “salt” provides if we are to sail atop the water. Otherwise, we sit in a shallow puddle. We must make space to acknowledge the sting of our wounds, even as we learn to release that pain. We must learn to hold each other’s pain and acknowledge that our work as a community involves healing both our own and others’ wounds. We must learn to embrace that work so that we are better equipped to go out and work for justice. When we work to heal our own wounds our skills at healing these larger wounds should become more proficient.
And so, I wish you a moment like my father and his family had so many years ago. I wish for all of us to stand upon the shore, facing the awe of what lies before us. I wish for all of us to walk into the sea, feeling the water upon our skin, the healing water made of our tears, our hope, our commitment to life. I wish for all of us to know the feeling of stepping out renewed.
We do not forget the past—we acknowledge the goat has disappeared, the blizzard is still raging, the angry misguided voices still chatter on, but we sail forward into the future alongside those closest to us, doing the work of love in all its glorious and infinite possibilities.
- We Go to the Sea - April 1, 2015
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