A Meditation on the Atlantic Ocean.

When in the presence of that which is greater than ourselves, when we are humbled, reduced, burned down to what is of us and not added to us--it is in these precious moments that we come to know ourselves, truly and without illusion or pretension. It is in relief and juxtaposition from the crafted and flattering image of ourselves that we can comprehend in honesty and clarity our own weakness, and consequently the potential for individual greatness. For what can become great besides that which is small? The enduring human fascination with God, whatever permutation such entity might take, is based upon the principal of removing the self as the object of worship and instead perceiving the same as a vessel of higher direction: it is agreed throughout all spiritual traditions that the one who feels he is God knows neither God nor himself. Like a sick person in denial of sickness, we stagnate until we are ready to be healed.

No knowledge of denomination or doctrine or dogma is essential to this understanding; to merely look into the infinite swell of the ocean or endless expanse of the firmament--to really see and not merely factually know the power and longevity of such in contrast to our feeble and transient stay is the path to subsume the dangerous passion of the ego--to realize we individually can be reclaimed by creation in an instant without the same taking a moment's notice. In any such moment of comprehension and true humility we can come to see the essence of our brief, ephemeral, and transitory presence. There is nothing sad about this prostration; billions have come before us and billions will come after, none with any greater ability to preserve his or her own stay here with significantly greater efficacy than you or I. And I tend to think that in these silent epiphanies , and not in the clamor and noise of the active ego, that we realize our potential--small beings that can be made large not by keeping, but by relinquishing all that which is in essence worth giving: our time, our love, our dispensable wealth and possessions; those things which we hoard at our moments of fear and selfishness, with which we are never diminished by parting.

My idea of God, a God that asks that we exist in the shadow of his halo and not try to outshine it, a God that is present in the magnificent quiet of solitude as much in the frantic engine of activity, has its presence in the mystical traditions of all faiths--the words of the Hebrew Jesus, the Catholic Aquinas, the Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita. He, or she, or it, is omnipresent and undying, asking that in our bleakest sorrows and highest ecstasies that we merely be receptive--alert, listening. This God presents a challenge to us: allow yourself to be remade in its presence; be the ship to carry worthy cargo, and not simply the captain of an empty ship. It is this God that I seek, and in the searching hope to be found worthy.