I'm happy to say that Sailor and I did not find an alligator, but we did find some funny trash: two tallboy Budweiser cans and a single flip-flop. I took several photos of some drunk person's litter to go along with the ones of the lighthouse. My guess was that some guy wandered down to this isolated beach area to chill out after work and have a cocktail (or tallboy, as the case may be). Finding the tallboys to be more potent than he realized (having failed to consider his slight build and infrequent drinking), he finds himself buzzy and in bad need of a Port-o-Let. There is none. He wanders close to the nearby brush to shake the dew (you know). Meanwhile, the sun is setting. Dusk. Feeding time. --This is where you should start feeling that anxious "Paranormal" vibe. -- Already beginning to reconsider his choice of untamed and isolated locations, he hears a rustle and runs to collect his belongings and get a start on the half-mile hike back to the car. After all, the path is paved, but tall, heavy brush lines both sides and there is no electric light at all. He quickly chugs the last of the tallboy, trips on a stray palm frond, loses a flip-flop, gropes around for the flip-flop briefly before abandoning it as he flees to safety. Beer-buzzed, half shoeless, eaten up with mosquito bites, blind and jumping at every rustle from the brush, it's a long and annoying trot to the car. This scenario amused me, so I took a photo.After much picture-taking of lighthouses and dead wood, I took another unrelated photo. Only after seeing it through the viewfinder did I realize how much these three palm trees resembled the three crosses you usually see displayed in churches at Easter. When I stood back, I noticed that these three palms were standing on a mountain of brush just above the littered cans and lost flip-flop. How metaphorical.
When I hear Jesus say, "come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" or the Statue of Liberty's call to the "huddled masses", I picture hard-working, dark-wool-wearing families who eat lots of potatoes and are unfortunately infringed upon through no fault of their own. There's a sense of nobility and struggle, an innocence about these downtrodden victims. Yes. Jesus calls them. He also calls the stupid and the stubborn, like me.
Our crime doesn't have to be outrageous and we don't have to be innocent. He could have said, "come to me, ye who have littered a pristine beach with empty beer cans and lost your stupid shoe. You irresponsible and shoeless idiot, I have your flip-flop." That was the gist of what I heard when he called me. I haven't done anything dramatic like endure incest or kill a family by careening my car into a mini-van. I've made pretty average mistakes that pile up into mountains of big old hot messes. Sometimes I just get sick of myself. I love this song by the amazing Matthew Sweet, "I'm sick of myself when I look at you, something that's beautiful and true; in a world that's ugly and a lie, it's hard to even want to try...". Sick of myself. Yes. I was. Sick of everyone else, too. Sometimes I still am. The good news is that now I know where my do-over is coming from. Jesus climbed up my hot mess mountain, got the crap beaten out of him, died a torturous death and came back from the dead three days later bringing my freedom back like a fireman bringing a baby out of a burning building. that's why they call them "baby Christians" and say "be born again". It's all new, a complete do-over. I got my stupid flip-flop back. Everything I lost, he gave it back.
Leslie V.
p.s. Faith is the most important facet of my life, so it's fitting that the first blog would explain exactly that, but this won't be a blog about only that.
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