ministry
A hundred Loggerhead hatchlings struggle out of a nest. Zoe and Kevin and I happen to walk by on our way to save the world, our hands carving the air as we talk, our feet encrusted with sand.
A woman waves to us, beckons with her arm, come and see, and I wonder momentarily if she also just happened by or if she got up before dawn, poured some coffee beside a window open to the pitch black night, if an official calling to check and protect the nests drew her down to the beach. We call them the turtle people, forgetting the fancier title, meaning the humans who drag out of bed all summer and drive their golf carts over the sand; who find the nests and, with gloved hands, carefully withdraw and count the turtle eggs; who pound sticks and build walls of dayglo orange and night-black tarp around the earthy incubating wombs all along the beach. The turtle people spend the season trying to save as many as possible. They’re downright religious about it.
Without discussion, we careen toward the nest. The woman grins, acknowledges us with a nod as we walk up, says only, “I’ve counted ninety-six so far,” as she glances back down at the sand.
At first glance, the babies look like tiny animated sand sculptures, the kind my brother and I used to dribble from wet fingers over our sandcastles. Though, as I bend closer, I realize that the turtles, with their sculpted flippers and those Loggerhead jaws already carved in miniature, with the faint traces of distinct shell patterns ghosting across their backs, are real works of Art. We watch as they tumble over the sandy ridge that borders their nest and begin to twist and push their little bodies over the grit toward the ocean, bumbling over the detritus of dead cord grass the tides have brought in from the salt marsh, winding their way over and around the shell beds that often cut and blister the tender soles of my feet. A few yards away, seagulls land and twist their beaks in our direction, their throats humming as they scan the beach with beady eyes. They’d make a snack of the turtles; they will, if we wander away. Everywhere, I see threats to safety. I stand guard over the babies, as if I could.
Despite the effort it must have taken the hatchlings to break free of the eggs and all the barriers to their passage, they make the trip from nest to ocean with surprising speed. We slowly turn and amble with them, taking pictures and videos and calling encouragement the turtles can neither hear nor understand, and I think of the book of Hebrews, of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us baby souls as we make our race toward home. I wonder if they speak over us, heavenly words in a heavenly tongue, but our ears are too dull to hear such things.
“Come on, little ones,” we say to the hatchlings, curving our fingers like scoops, urging them closer and closer to the sea.
The woman who beckoned us over lightly touches a young man, her son maybe, on the shoulder, softly says, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
Her grin stretches wide, and he runs a tanned hand through a mop of brassy curls, stuffing his other hand in his pocket. So, not turtle people, except that we have all also now become an auxiliary, if temporary, band of intentional protectors. There are ministers, but all of us really are called to ministry.
We shake our heads at the seagulls, say ridiculous and useless things like, “Not on my watch,” as though we rule the world.
When the hatchings reach the sea, the waves knock them backwards, as life does. The turtles move their flippers frantically as they try to swim out into the water, but sometimes they get flipped onto their backs and have to wait through forced rest until another wave twirls them back into position. Often, the waves rush them back up the beach by yards. I think of what Paul says about how we’re hard-pressed on every side. I think of sickness and loss and wrecked lives.
Laboriously, the turtles recover the lost terrain, inch-by-inch. Most of them eventually make it at least as far as we can continue to track them, into and under the waves, where fishy predators and miles of swimming await them, but a few hatchlings labor longer on the shore, turning around in circles like wanderers in the desert; seeming to lack the strength to finish the journey. We stand over the last few, our cupped fingers scooping the air, as though this gesture could help them persevere across the last few feet of sand and past the surf zone into deeper water. I want to play God, to reach down and pick them up, toss them the rest of the way. But I know, as the turtle people do, that this pilgrimage trains the hatchlings to survive. The testing of faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work.
So, I stuff my hands in my pockets, smiling wanly as the stragglers wander and fumble and stop just feet from the waves, as the seagulls hop closer and test the boundaries of our protection, as a weary one goes astray. Desperately, I want them to make it. I will them there with all of my heart.
“No, no, this way, little ones,” I say. “This is the way.”
I look up the beach, catch the eye of someone else on their way to save the world, and I beckon with my arm. Come and see.
