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I Will Cease My Relentless Deconstruction

I will cease my relentless deconstruction when I have excavated deep enough to find something solid upon which I can begin to build again.

So far I have found only foundations that turn to sand when I rest the weight of my full being against them.

I would be a fool to build on sand.

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But I’d also be a fool not to linger here a while.

After all, the sand is where I first found god, long before words and symbols took god from me, took me from myself. In the sand at the edge of the world, where land meets sea and sea meets sky and god hovers over the face of the waters as a giant ball of sunset sinking slowly behind the horizon.

Here I am one with all things.

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I would be a fool to build anything on the sand. I don’t need a tabernacle here. The sand is enough. The wet sand between my toes, the green water swirling around my ankles, the weightless foam.

Here I cannot tell where sand ends and land begins. I cannot tell where god ends and I begin.

The setting sun casts a path of gold across the waves and I feel the longing all the way down my tiny child body, longing to walk out into the water, to follow that path home.

I would never make it. Not in a million years could I reach that which calls to me. But it calls to me just the same, here in the sand.

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(this story is about me as a six-year-old boy on the shores of lake michigan in ludington state park. i went back there a few years ago and found the path of gold, and watched my son walk in front of it with a piece of driftwood for a walking stick. the longing never ends.)

published March 11, 2020

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