mister metal detector guy

From the sixteenth floor of The Carolinian, Kevin and I watch the sunrise.  We sit on the balcony, sipping steamy coffee, gasping over the vastness of the sea, stunned by the silvery surface of the water reflecting the sky, threaded suddenly with amber and gold.

The perspective up here on the balcony reminds us of one we had years ago from the upper level of a cruise ship, when we leaned on a railing above a quicksilver sea and drank our coffee as morning dawned.  Up high and surrounded by the water, we had silently appreciated the massive power of the ocean.

“This ship is nothing but a cork,” Kevin had said finally, as we watched the quiet swell of waves rising like mountains below us, the water undulating like a living thing.  I thought about the many diverse ecosystems below the surface, hidden then from our sight, and remembered Walt Whitman’s famous line.  I am large, I contain multitudes.

Now, we watch from above as tiny people on the beach below us meander and pause, turning toward the water and the horizon, captivated by the morning light show.  Occasionally, a flock of shore birds grazes the side of the tower where we sit, and the sound of their flapping wings thunders in my ears.

We’re so small, I keep thinking, as we gaze out over sea and sky and land, all of it stretching well beyond our sight in both directions. I recognize in the immense capacity of creation the dim reflection of the height and width and depth of God’s love.  The sky and sea and land are microscopic masterpieces made by the God who spoke the world into being, and as such, they express something of the personality of their maker.  By comparison, I am smaller still.  Paul once prayed that the Ephesians would, “have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.”

I sip my coffee and turn to prayer, laying a hand palm-up in my lap.  Lord, would you give me the power to grasp your love, to know experientially what I can’t entirely perceive or accommodate in my mind?

Over the last few years, God has continually invited me to consider His ineffability and limitlessness.  I watch and listen carefully, reaching for what Abraham Heschel described as “the inscrutable.” In Heschel’s words,

…to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words…the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God said, “neither are your ways my ways.”

We stretch ourselves, trying to understand.  We want to build God houses, trying, in our feeble way, to love the One who has given us His Name, His family, His life.  We turn passion into academics, trying to obtain by our knowledge what surpasses it.

I catch sight of a man walking along the shore with a metal detector, drawn by the rapid, repetitive arc of arm and machine.  He bends his head toward the sand, intent.  Headphones cover his ears, black rounds like pin-tip blots canceling out the sound of the sea.  I watch him pause, reaching for a shovel he wears on his belt.  He inclines his head and moves a few inches closer to the water before spearing the sand, scarring the smooth stretch that overnight had been covered by water.  He shakes the shovel, watching as the sand falls away in clumps, then reaches into the pan.  Even from so high up, I can tell that he’s searching, mashing the wet sand between his fingers.  Finally, he finds a bit of something, lifts it closer to his eyes for better inspection, and then swiftly tosses it away.  I smile, a remnant of an old beer commercial flitting through my mind.  Here’s to you, Mister Metal Detector Guy.  I wonder what set off his machine.  A bit of an old soft drink can?  A hair clip?  Junk jewelry?  The way he flung his hand, I could tell whatever grabbed his attention turned out to be trash.  Briefly, I wonder how much treasure he’s found out there on the beach.

I can’t help but see something of myself in the irony of the situation, in the purposeful way Mister Metal Detector Guy moves on, getting back to work, his head bent again toward the sand, his headphones firmly in place.  I don’t know, but from up here he seems oblivious to the vast, powerful beauty around him, to the stunning glory of new morning arriving on the ocean.  He seems too busy collecting and discarding buried garbage to stand still and see the trove just awaiting his attention.  My guess is that almost no one gets rich combing the beach with a metal detector, but I’m not knocking his hobby or even assuming I know what it is for him.  It’s just that in this moment, the picture of him out there reminds me of me when I’m so preoccupied with the minors that I miss the majors, when I’m too driven by distraction to receive God’s gifts.

I can imagine that from God’s perspective, I look busy like that man, with my head down and my eyes blinded by the ground and my ears blocked from hearing the rush of God’s voice.  I know He watches me dig up trash and sighs, because I’ve felt His hands, suddenly nudging me to behold, telling me to listen.

C.S. Lewis once said that, “We are far too easily pleased,” that,

Our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

I have been that ignorant child, and now, once again, on a holiday by the sea, God urges me out of the mud and away from what the writer of Ecclesiastes called hebel, that is, what is evanescent and worthless, toward life that is truly life.