Welcome to a place of peace. You can lounge in your favorite kind of chair or just perch on a bench and stare out to sea, enjoying the beautiful range of changing colors and the soothing sounds of the surf on the shore. You can smell a slight tang of seaweed, almost taste the salt, and feel the freshening breeze on your cheek and ruffling your hair. Sea air invigorates and energizes; it is healing.
You can set aside anything that has been burdening you, be it health challenges, wealth challenges, or relationship challenges. Place it to one side like an old suitcase. You can always pick it up later, if you choose. And you can know that in a sacred place, a place where it is easy to feel God's presence, problems are not so much solved as dissolved. You return to the everyday world "with sturdier limbs and brighter brain". For now, just step aside, relax, and let God work in you and in the situation.
The pounding of the breakers pounds the tension out of your body. The scent of blossoms delights you. The sea air renews your mind and spirit. Rest in the now. Let go, and let God. . . .
Come back as often as you like to refresh your mind, body, and spirit.
The Rhythm of Life
Californians enjoy an abundance of beaches, just as we do here in Florida. Recently, two of our California friends have written about rhythm in ways that gave us new insights.
Rod Hyatt Carter recently wrote a little article in the Founder's Church newsletter, The Word (May-June 2006), titled "Rhythms of Rest and Rejuvenation". He explains clearly and succinctly how psychiatrist Milton Erickson, who made clinical hypnosis a respectable scientific discipline, discovered the use of ultradian rhythms in the healing process. Erickson's work is very much in line with that of the father of New Thought, P. P. Quimby. Erickson's student, Ernest Rossi, carried this research farther. Hypnosis is simply a state of altered consciousness, and at certain intervals during the day (ultradian rhythms), we are more receptive to healing. The bottom line is that the body-mind calls for time out at regular intervals, and we are wise to heed the signals and take a break. Rod suggests that we "consciously synchronize our healing prayers with these 20-minute windows of access to our creative unconscious."
Patricia Adams Farmer has written a beautiful book of meditations, Embracing a Beautiful God. A Disciples of Christ minister and process thinker, Patricia describes her trips to the beach for rest and renewal.
"God is like the alluring ocean on a bright day, compelling us to abandon everything but who we really are. When all the crustiness is washed off, we are simply shining beings flying kites and holding tiny hands and jumping like fishes.
"Restless, rolling, mysterious--God is the ever-moving continuity and freshness of the sea, never the same in any moment. God's heartbeat is like the rhythm of the ocean, and when we succumb to this alluring force, we cannot be anything less than shining beings on the edge of a playful universe."
