A Bucket of Shells

Dear Cultivating Enoughers:

Peace be with you!  I truly hope and pray you are getting some time off this summer - not only for your sake but for the sake of the people you serve.  A rested, refreshed pastor is invaluable.  This past week I was in Ocean City, New Jersey with my two children, who each brought a friend.  My parents live in Bethany Beach, Delaware, so most of my adult life I spent visiting them.  It wasn't until the summer of 2020 that I needed a quick COVID-friendly getaway for my daughter's birthday, away from everyone else, that we went to the Jersey Shore.  I have since understood in a deep way why people save all year to cram all their belongings into the car to live on top of one another for a week, going to a hot, sandy beach with thousands of people.  It is heavenly.  The sunscreen, the sand, the crying babies, the loud talkers, the salt water, the crowded boardwalk, lugging chairs and umbrellas back and forth every day; I love it all, on repeat.

One day while Julia and her friend and I were on the beach, it was almost on the cool side - too cool to want to get into the water.  Without much to do, I proposed a challenge to try to keep them engaged.  I grabbed the nearby sandcastle bucket and suggested we try to fill the entire thing with shells.  Not pretty shells or whole shells, just any shell.  We begin sifting through the sand around us, picking up the fragments and dropping them into the bucket.  After a little while the girls got bored, but I continued sifting and picking, roaming around our towel space finding whatever shells I could.  I was shocked and surprised by how satisfying this little endeavor turned out to be.  There was something almost therapeutic about the process.

I was reminded of Rev. Dr. Nate Stucky's sermon the Saturday before at our presbytery meeting, about God being the Great Gardener; about God creating the human from the dust of the earth.  I thought about this basic form of earth as the sand fell through my fingers.  This felt like a spiritual practice to me, and I was endeared to have God show up in this unexpected way.  After filling our bucket and calling it a day, we contemplated what to do with this wealth of shells.  At first we thought we'd take it home; show it to Julia's friend's aunt, maybe?  In the end we dug a hole and buried them in the sand.  Spiritual practices aren't about the results, after all.  I was so taken by the experience that I performed a mini-version the next day, digging the hole in the sand first, then filling it up with the bits of shells again.

I love this about spiritual practices - they don't have be prescribed or manufactured, but can be those simple things we do that enable us to feel close to God and humanity, closer to the earth, closer to one another.  Sometimes we seek them out through prayer, meditation, Scripture reading, or silence.  Other times them seem to seek us out, like when we're on vacation, wondering what to do on the beach. 

Praying for you and your ministries, always.

Blessings,
Sarah