Six Apostles On The Beach

This entry on The Serenity Prayer was written in October, 2005, when we lived in the Diocese of Maine and were banned and barred from church halls and property because we were standing and speaking truth to power. It shows how difficult it was then to be church in the 21st century. Same as now, back home in New Hampsire, two years later. Does a job on serenity, it does.

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The Serenity Prayer

Pine Point, Maine
October 17, 2005

Going Down On The Beach

The sand on our beach is not much like that of William Blake, who wrote in Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

No matter how long or hard I stare at a grain of sand beneath my feet, or shift to a wild flower among those at the end our street so appropriately named Sea Rose Lane, neither the world nor heaven is seen, not even in my imagination, as it must have been in his. My palm is quite finite, and the hours have no concept of eternity. Nor do I.

Trudging in our sand, rumpled, spotted with ocean debris, shreds of seaweed, weathered wood chunks, a bottle cap, the inside scraped to reveal a number that was no good, a soggy woolly duck with a sad beak now closed, I cannot see a world, just junk.

Turning towards the ocean, that magnificent, monstrous, looming, immense mass of power at my very feet, I wonder whether the world is indeed junk. My eyes peer as far as the horizon, beyond the two small islands which guard our Grand Bay here in Pine Point in Maine on the Atlantic, catching glints off the tops of waves, shades of blue that vary infinitesimally and infinitely, until they reach up and touch the bottoms of the clouds, hovering, always hovering, as they move slowly, majestically towards the east, whence the sun.

I turn the other way and look for the moon, but that horizon has already swallowed it, just as the first one is slowly sticking the sun up as if were about to lick the ball of earth the way a grandchild goes for the first taste of a Chocolate Ice Cream cone. Slowly. No hurry. Make it last for a while. Maybe a whole day, until the sun chases down the moon and slips beyond the western horizon, especially after a couple of weeks of drenching rain. We had floods here on land, big ones.

Walking on the beach is good for the feet. Bare feet to heel a hole in a mound with a stomp or to kiss the sand with sliding steps as only an old man who has walked this beach since the middle of the last century has the right and the ability to do. Won’t be long now, though.

Walking this beach is good for the head. Clears it, as now in mid-fall, when the summer people are gone and our front yard is vacant, leaving most of the beach open for me and Hannah, my Dachshund, from one river on the east to the other river seven miles down to the west. She bounds, pounces on some hidden smell, wags her tail as only a miniature dog can do, her whole body quivering in tuneful ripples with the tip of the tail, looks up at me, and smiles.

We’ve been together ten years now and can see each other’s thoughts, feel each other’s feels. Each one of us misses her lifelong companion, Marantha, the other half of the pair which was not to be separated, until death came a couple of months ago. When both were with me in the sand, salted by the spray spewed off the tops of waves by a nor'east wind, we were a trinity.

Our world is sand and ocean and sky and everything we can touch and smell and taste and hear and see, plus everything beyond all those physical sensations, for we know, just know, that beyond it all is more. Lots more. Infinitely lots more.

Walking this beach is good for the soul. Though it tries to be as active as the feet, soul is often passive. And yet it tries to keep moving on from soft and clumpy sand onto the hard-packed wet flat darker firmer sand left by the tide now retreating to low from high a few hours before. Easier walking on hard sand, but not as much feel as from the shifting crumbles of soft sand, still with far more anticipation on reaching water’s edge and testing the cold of the North Atlantic with a brave shivering big toe. It’s like the long walk of the soul itself, from the soft finity of the womb, out onto the stretch of life’s hard-packed sand and then into the ocean’s infinity. Soon? Later?

Mind, the restless part of me, asks, “How can time enter in here?” And off it goes, wondering whether there will be time in space or even space at all, and perhaps Blake was right about that grain of sand, after all? Or the flower, the palm, the hour?

“Why is it,” soul ever searching asks, “that you always look up and out when you get moody like this, little mind?”

“Simple. Because there is almost nothing in here to compare with what is out there,” whispers mind.

Soul, “Where, then, is God?”

Hannah barks, ending the reverie, a passing thought not qualifying for a meditation.

Six Apostles Come to the Beach

As I look up, six lesser known apostles come walking across the surface of the water, not famous like the others, some of them almost nameless and being led by my friend Thomas Didymus the one who dared ask questions, because he wanted to know what he saw and felt and he got it. The others, making quite a mix, as friends will do, are:

• Andrew. The one who brought people to Jesus, like his brother Peter.

• Philip. From Bethsaida, buddy of Andrew and Peter.

• Bartholomew. At the Sea of Tiberias and the Ascension.

• Thaddaeus. His other name is Judas, a bit confusing.

• Simon the Zealot. Out of a nationalistic sect with strong political views.

Simon senses my mood, “Down, Paul? Over the God-stuff lately?”

“Yup. It shows, huh?”

“We six, the other half-dozen of The Twelve, know the ups ‘n downs of pious feelings so well, my friend, “ says Bartholomew, about my height, which is not too imposing yet not too short either, as he tries to slide in between a yapping Dachshund and my own feet.

When Thaddeus, aware of mistaken identities, raises his comforting hand from deep within the flowing garment, oddly dry despite the ocean spray, and bends over to let Hannah smell his palm, the little tail begins wagging again and she rears up on her hind legs, lifts her lapping tongue high to kiss a friend she has come to love.

Thomas is quiet, strange for him, but so fitting for a change, as he stays in the background to let the others lift me up and back to the reality of my world where the God-speakers are killing us all.

Simon says, “We had our Zealots, too, Paul, and we thought we could run the whole world of our own times. While we didn’t think we were God, as some of your hierarchs do, the way they puff up and strut about in medieval costumes, we did fall for the spin that God spoke to us and through us, sort of like your president, what’s his name? Hedge? Shrub? . . . ”

“Bush,” interrupts Philip.

“Don’t you mean Rove?” asks Andrew, “that smirky guy in the background who is named with such insight. He is a real rover. All over the place. A wanderer, roamer, rambler, drifter, the guy who goes hither and thither dropping leaks, which flood as he meanders on, just to confuse things so much that when the president speaks, it does sound like God is talking.”

“Nope, Bush,” repeated Philip. “He claims he got knocked off his horse by Jesus.”

“Oh, Jesus!” blurted Thomas, “Another Saul becoming Paul? This one going to change his name from Bush to Push?”

Simon, laughing like a Democrat, “If he does, bet he makes the announcement on an aircraft carrier, with a flight helmet under his arm and a huge banner behind him -- This Is My Beloved Son! -- signed by # 41. Ha!”

Knowing these men are my friends, I kick at the cold water sloshing around my feet, and from the depths of my discouragement, but not loss of faith – there is a difference – I reach out to Andrew, “Look, you know the Lord so well, and the people you bring to him, you’re not going to tell me that President Bush is nuts, has bats in his belfry, are you?”

“No, Paul, I can’t do that,” was the very quiet reply from Andrew, “no one should ever condemn another’s faith lightly, or even make fun of it, which is the same thing. Even for us who have been there, done that, we, too, were mistaken about Jesus himself. We thought he was the Messiah who would overturn Rome.”

Thomas, “I doubted him.”

Thaddeus, “Big time, Tom, big time.”

Hannah barks. Everyone laughs, including me.

Apostolic Liturgy With Frisbie

Bartholomew whips out a Frisbie. The bunch of us split off on routes like seasoned athletes, me alone wheezing and limping. Hannah tries to jump up and snitch the Frisbie out of his hand, held dangerously low to the ground, but a spiritual flick of the wrist sends it sailing into the wind, where it is caught, its vector changing by an unseen hand, and comes zooming down like a grace from heaven right into my outstretched fingers, a one-handed catch that draws apostolic applause. And one real, proud Dachshund. I flip it back, with an earthly spin on it, hoping to confuse the holy.

“Hey, Paul," yells Thaddeus, on a dead-run up across the hard sand to the soft sand where he stumbles and falls, still managing to catch and hold the Frisbie, “what’s your favorite prayer?”

Still gasping from my human effort, “The Serenity Prayer.”

Sitting up now, twirling the Frisbie in his hands, “You made the fundamentalist’s mistake again, old man. You do that a lot, you know.”

“Oh! darn it, Thad, stop criticizing me. You’re a nitpicker. When a guy’s down, don’t kick him. Coach up. Be nice.” A bit of self-pity works sometimes, even with apostles, I think.

“Crybaby Paulie Waulie, want a Kleenex?” yells Philip, “What are you planning to do? Run for President?”

“Easy now, Philip, easy. He’s still human and they’re known to be touchy, ” says Thomas, who sees my courage about to drain to empty, “Thaddeus was going to teach Paul a basic lesson, so simple in its simplicity that almost everyone who prays The Serenity Prayer hasn’t seen it yet. Go on, Thad, finish up. My feet are cold.”

The Serenity Prayer

“OK, Tom, “ and Thaddeus stands. flips the Frisbie in a careless yet magnificent arcing flight over to Simon, who catches it as deftly as only a politician can, and resumes, “Paul, The Serenity Prayer begins with To accept the things I cannot change.”

“Think I don’t know that, didactic one?” I mutter, still annoyed.

“Oh! you know it. You know it well. You’ve been laying back and accepting crap all your life long from popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, judges, senior partners, clients, and all those on your lists who don’t like the way you use words. You are a Walking Serenity Prayer, The First Part Only.”

Quick. To the point. A summary of my life, from part of a prayer.

I go white, stop stock still, know an insight is on its way, telegraphed by each one of the six apostles now standing tall out of the water on the sand in a circle around me. Hannah stands like a jaguar, head up, tail straight back and pointing to infinity, ears out yet motionless in the wind.

“There is more, much more than one part to the prayer, dear friend, far more important than the first part, which is just to get you ready for the other two. We are asking God, every time we pray The Serenity Prayer for The Courage to change the things we can.” And Thaddeus folds his hands in prayer.

The other five apostles do so, too. Hannah is already in her prayer mode, sitting up straight, front paws touching gently, for the prayer as well as for balance, the very balance of the meaning of the prayer itself.

I fold my hands, as Thomas says, “Time, Paul, to start changing the things you can change. Time to stop accepting everything that comes down the pike from Rome and its chanceries. Your president may have bats in his belfry, but your cardinals and other hierarchs are the bats in the belfry of the church.”

Philip awkwardly pitches in, “You make up nicknames for hierarchs, being overly fond of birds, probably because of the cardinals, but these mediocre men from cardinals to bishops are just like bats, in particular from the species known as The Pipistrel, defined as “a small insectivorous Old World bat with a jerky, erratic flight.”

“Know who the insects are, Paul?” yells Andrew, real worked up now, “The same three pursued down the ages by discriminators and persecutors – women, children, minorities. The marginalized, Paul, the ones who can’t fight back. That’s who!”

Thomas, not being annoyed a bit by the eager interruptions and smiling with approval, “Pipistrels never go after eagles, falcons, hawks, not even after wise old owls. Their prey are insects, the little people. Time you changed, Paul, got off your hammock of serenity, and went out to pluck the wings off a Pipistrel You can do it, and you know you can do it.”

Simon adds. with the caution of the politician, “Don’t try to go it alone, Paul. We did not. We were Church, working together with people we respected and even with those we did not respect, for our Church excludes no one, not even presidents who talk with God, or think they do. Although, we usually recommend help for those presidents who go one step further and claim that God speaks to them. As in other situations, that is a Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell sort of thing. Confuses people. Tries to turn politicians into holier-than-thous. Amazing how many people are impressed with such palaver. Amazing.”

Suddenly, in the quiet of reflection, the sun in its western descent, Bartholomew speaks, “I haven’t said much today and this looks like a real, good place and time for what I want to say. It has to do with the last part of The Serenity Prayer, the Wisdom to know the difference.

“You flopped into your hammock of spirituality of acceptance after being granted the Serenity you prayed for. You stayed locked in the first part of the prayer only,” Bartholomew was winding up, “So, too, quick-learners like you quit right after the spirituality of changing part, same way, and go off half-cocked, ill-prepared, without a company, and all you can do is flail and stomp and write a lot, an awful lot of words which nobody reads. You forget or don’t bother with the third and most important part of the prayer. You have to receive Wisdom. You must be wise, not smart or well-read, not even learned, you have to have Wisdom. It is only Wisdom that lets you know what you can and what you cannot do, when to accept and when to change.”

“Remember, for goodness’ sake, remember,” says Thaddeus who started this whole lesson, “there are three parts, three requests, three gifts. You ask for Serenity and you get acceptance of things. You ask for Courage and you can change things. You ask for Wisdom and you can decide which one to do and when. You need all three. Just one won’t do much at all. ”

Thomas, doubtful he was heard the first time, “Keep in mind that third part, being wise, Paul. It’s the key. Discouraged people can accept all day long. Fools can keep rushing it and getting whacked. Only the wise know when and how. Pipistrels are terrified of wise old owls. You’re already old, You look like an owl half the time, too. You can be wise.”

“OK, you Holy Half Dozen, my six apostles, and just how do you think this old man is supposed to find such Wisdom, or even Courage,” I managed to object, an old habit of mine.

Thomas and the other five in unison, “Same place you found the Serenity. From the prayer. All you have to do is ask – that’s prayer. Up to now, we left out the beginning of The Serenity Prayer: God, grant us . . . “

Sounded staged to me, I thought, as I hug each one of them, let Hannah kiss their hands – although Thaddeus picked her up and kissed her smack on the lips – and watched them walk out on the water, until they were well on their way. The sun is setting, The ocean is flat. The sand is turning grey, going cold.

I stand there with Hannah beside me for a long time. I see my world. All inside me, around me, beyond me, from the few grains of sand on which I am standing, up into the galaxy I live in and into outer space. I wave one last wave to my friends, as they turn around in a group to wave at me and Hannah and our Church.

What is heard and felt, unmistakably felt within, is the promise of The Lord, though as between the six of them and myself, the last word is changed from them to you.

Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of you.

Hannah sits up. I sit, fold my legs and put my hands together. We pray:

God, grant us

the Serenity to accept the things we cannot change,

the Courage to change the things we can,

and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Amen.