A man sits on a beach and watches eternity dance. Waves crash in and glassy sheets pull back out, fading bubbles of sandy foam left in their wake. Flocks of pelicans drag across the sky, synchronized as they flap and glide, flap and glide. This morning buzzed; this afternoon will crawl. The earth inhales and exhales, the Divine concerned only with harmony.
He and his wife, visiting on their honeymoon, have found their own rhythm here. Each day, they fill the blue wagon with coolers and boogie boards and a soccer ball and plant themselves on the exact same patch of sand as the day before, where they find the same song on repeat: swim, read, eat, sleep, swim. The consistency stretches the days out.
There are a handful of families staying in the rental houses next to theirs, and he watches them move through routines of their own.
New parents rub layer after layer of sunscreen on the baby, who is here for the first time. Teens hurl themselves headfirst into the waist-deep ocean. Grandparents make cocktails and wear sun hats and set out for strolls toward the dock off in the distance.
A sand crab pokes its head out, taking a long peek before scurrying from one tiny cave to another.
Here, the pace is set more by being than by doing.
Chronos and kairos, he remembers: a lesson from an old classroom about how the ancient Greeks distinguished between two types of time.
Chronos, like chronology. School starts the day after Labor Day; a draft of the quarterly report is due in two weeks; only three months to go until retirement.
Kairos, meaning in God’s time. A holy play whose roles are far more constant than we are. The Wave, the Sand Crab, the Toddler Splashing in the Tidepool, the Grandparent Taking a Walk—enduring archetypes, parts we play for only an instant.
The familiarity in the family’s movements tells him they’ve been coming here for a long time. Each year they load up the car, leave instructions for feeding the cat, and brave traffic as they make their pilgrimage to this place where they write another page in their book of life, ever-so-slightly different from the last.
Here, where the tides rise and recede without ever stopping, where they stand on the edge of more life than they can fathom, they understand themselves not as single notes but as the symphony itself.
The man glances again, and when he does he realizes that what he first thought was a cloud is a hand, and it is reaching out of the sky. It pulls the book’s pages back, holding them tight for an imperceptible pause. Then it eases its grip, and the pages flutter by one by one, entire lifetimes gone by in an instant.
He sees what is obvious: that just yesterday, the grandparents were the babies. Only tomorrow, the babies will be the grandparents.
He sinks deeper into his chair and smells wet salt on the air. Sandpipers scatter, and he thinks of the life he and his beloved have just promised to one another—of the faces and places and waltzes through time that they have only begun to fill it with.
A seagull drones. The baby giggles. He hears the water breathe in, and then out.
Pay attention, they whisper.
This will all happen quickly.
I recently shared an early draft of this piece with paid subscribers, and I owe many of them a big thank you for helping me shape it into what what’s here. It’s been a good summer project, and I’m happy with it.
Also, in case you missed it, there’s an audio version you can click and listen to just above the photo up top.
Whatever you’re up to, enjoy the summer. There’s plenty left.
Much love,
Jonathan
So cool to see this piece (peace?) come to fruition after reading an early draft. Beautiful prose and even more beautiful ideas; cycles, reflections, and paying attention. 💙
I'd never heard of those two notions of time before. I dig it.