the edge of land and sea

today when i walked rosie to school, the sky was perfect in that cool closed cloudy way.  it was the kind of sky that needed an ocean beneath it.  it needed continuum.  it need space and expansion.  i walked up the pebbly path in my flip-flops and leaned heavily on my memory of sand and sea and the sounds and the smells that go with it, because there is something about where the land ends and the water begins that douses me in perspective.

i wanted to walk miles at that junction, at that intersection of what we walk on and what we are mostly made of.  i wanted to walk miles on that sand made only of brokenness.  broken stones, broken shells, broken and refined and softened and smoothed by pressure and time.  like me.

today in my lenten reading, i read the wise words of ronald rolheiser.

we need a theology of brokenness.  we need a theology which teaches us that even though we cannot unscramble an egg, God's grace lets us live happily and with renewed innocence far beyond any egg we may have scrambled.

amen.

maybe we live long to know this.  the first half of our life is trying to figure out the rules and get it right. the second half of our life is realizing that we never will. and thus begins the process of figuring out what to do with that, how to find that balance of acceptance and trying, how to surrender and carry on.

how do we live in this?

we life in the grace.  we live in that beautiful place of knowing that perfection is not an option and knowing that our state of scrambled is a constant.  from this place of beautiful let down, of beautiful embrace, we can find gentleness and kindness and forgiveness and humility and love.  we can begin to love our broken scrambled little selves and to hold the hands of our broken scrambled neighbors. and then what we strive for changes. our trying to get it right changes.  our living changes.  then we can become community.  then we can stop worrying and competing and wearing ourselves out and we can start being full, we can start giving out of our fullness, and being filled by the fullness of others.

a theology of brokenness brings freedom and connection and renewal.  that sand, those soft broken up bits that have been so hammered and made small and fine, they link the sea and the land.  they transition. and they hold our feet as we walk on and on through our life, through time, at that great edge, that expanse- as we process what is- as we reach for the grace.