I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Mary Bellon’s poem and reflection Return to the Ocean.
This poem reflects a journey back to origins, which for me includes the Pacific ocean. But origins are funny things because in some sense they also appear in the now and the immediate, allowing the nature of Presence to hold memory, recognition, new life and expectation.
Return to the Ocean
Here I am gathered at the edge of the Pacific
sheltered in a cove behind the beige California bluffs
sculpted as bodies of sand
beauty in an unassuming sentinel
watching tides move toward and away.
I walk up and out of the water to make imprints
with my feet in the damp earth which skirts the longing
of the sea, its coming and going, its need to sweep
across to the seam of the bluffs, then retreat.
I am here to remember where I came from,
gather again the smell of salt, it’s taste in my hair,
its lines marking my body that is softening
as the sun rises in the sky and owns the heat
I feel on the back of my neck
and in my throat, then down my legs
until the warmth of time reminds me of no time.
I am here to remember where I go from,
from where I always journey, not just this day
but in all seasons where my life must break
from the one shell encasing, protecting,
to another shell, suitable for going on,
capable of holding me until I return,
like today, like this return I mark with strength
and with knowing I am a part of this biome
of salty life feeding and being fed
this place where Divine purposes
wrap around my wrists like seaweed, sticky,
stretching in great piles scavenged by gull and crab,
maybe a turtle in a moonlit night,
Divinity resting in movement -- always the gathering of tides
that bring absolute stillness to the mind.
I am here to collect memory
of the time I was anointed by mystery
and to love that in the way the world cannot love,
to embrace what is beautiful but often hidden
like fish beneath the surf, like the lighthouse
far, far out on the cliff to the north
whose beam flashes and disappears,
flashes and disappears,
holding both light and dark
imagining within the great pause
all that will be revealed.
Rev. Mary Lautzenhiser Bellon, PhD lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina with her daughter Laurel and Laurel’s partner Mallory, and three dogs: Charlie, Rocky and Alfie. Mary has been a sojourner in place and spirit throughout her life, growing up in California, working in upstate New York for twelve years, settling in Iowa for 24 years and then recently moving to South Carolina. She is a retired pastor and pastoral counselor, ongoing spiritual director, dream worker, and contemplative who lives on the edge of God’s gracious revelation in time.
