I’ve been home for a day and quickly got back into the flurry of everyday life. But now that it’s evening, I have the time to think a bit about my days away. I went to Cape Cod partially because I’ve always wanted to go, and partially because something hasn’t been “right” for a couple of months now, and I thought some time in a new setting, with no distractions, would help me find whatever “it” was.

I am not sure I did.

But time alone, without distractions, is never wasted.

I had hours and hours to simply walk beaches. I am glad I went in winter because that meant I had the beaches almost entirely to myself. In a world that crawls with people, that kind of aloneness is rare. Even here in Vermont, in my little village of just a few hundred people, there ARE people. Cars go by. Phones ring. Texts come in. But these past few days, I had hours and hours of sand and water and horizons.

At the beginning of each walk, my mind was buzzing. Ideas of things to write. Thinking about work and life and church back home. Noticing things I wanted to take pictures of. Feeling the cold wind that blew incessantly. Generally, about twenty or thirty minutes into it, I wanted to turn back and get to the warmth. But I made myself keep walking and it was only then, in that time of pushing past where I wanted to be there, that my mind began to settle. Something about the long stretches of emptiness and the rhythm of the waves calmed my mind and calmed my heart and simply let me feel and think without the normal litany of self-judgments that I normally carry.

WAVE PIC

I turned my life over and over like some ancient artifact, looking for new insights into an old life. That’s what I do. I am always looking for lessons in life. That is a part of my nature. Whatever happens to us, good, bad and sometimes even indifferent, generally has a lesson. Sometimes it’s a new lesson. Sometimes it’s just a reminder of an old lesson that we need to be reminded of. What, I kept wondering, had changed? And was it a tidal change, or just the change of a wave sliding up the beach and back down in the moment?

And did it matter?

That’s right. Did it even matter?

Because I came to the place where I saw some things that were bothering me, but at this point, most of them are outside my control. I’ve done what I can do. I will continue to do what I can do. But the next steps are not mine to take. I simply need to keep doing the best I can, in the moment, and to wait until others move or make decisions or finish things.

I suck at waiting. Most people think I have a lot of patience, but I don’t. Not internally. I am afraid I was raised to do and fix and make things happen. Simply waiting was not an option. Most of us have some of that in us, I think, but men generally get a double dose of it, and I may have gotten a triple dose. When something happens, I am in immediate “What can I do?” mode. And all too often in life, we are instead called on to wait. Or to simply be there for someone else as THEY do what they need to be doing to get to where they are traveling. When things aren’t moving in my life, my first inclination is that I am not doing enough.

How foolishly proud that is. Because more often, what we need to do is wait. We need to wait for people to finish talking before we craft a reply. We need to wait and get the full facts before we make a judgment. We need to wait for our souls to settle, our hearts to heal, our minds to clear before we make decisions. We need to give God time to work.

And that is the big lesson of this trip, I think. A relearning of the importance of waiting gracefully.

I was thinking that very thought, when on my way back to write Saturday afternoon, I passed a house with a sculpture garden. Prominently featured was a statue of buddha, in the lotus position. The statue had been there a while, it’s metal corroded and worn with years of exposure to the New England winds and salt air. Peaceful and still. Like a physical exclamation mark of the lesson I was there to learn.

At one point over the weekend, I was coming up from the beach and saw a man taking pictures of the Life Saving Station at Race Point. “I come here every day,” he told me, “and take pictures of that place. I am trying to get the perfect picture of it.”

I asked him how long he had been doing this.

“Eight years.” he said.

He was not unhappy that he had not gotten the perfect picture. He was simply happy to have the chance to come there. To see. To do. Until whatever time that perfect picture arrives. He waits, gracefully.

Waiting gracefully does not mean being satisfied with where we are, or even being happy with it. It simply means to acknowledge that things are not as we would like them, that there are things we can’t control and must wait for, and find grace and joy in what IS. For me, these past few days, what IS included the rare opportunity to be in solitude, a chance to happily write away for hours at a time, good seafood, and the company of strangers.

The company of strangers. I got a lot of that these past four days. My life is rich with friends, but in Provincetown, my life was rich with strangers. Every time I went into town, or had a meal, people at the tables next to me, or in the shops, struck up conversation. It may be the friendliest place I have ever been. My last night there, after talking back and forth with a group of three couples, they invited me to their table. Six people. Three men and three women. One “straight” couple. One gay couple and one lesbian couple. Some of them were Trump supporters. Some were Sanders supporters. One loved Jeb Bush and another thought politics were a waste of time. Two were Christians (I would see one of them at church the next day.), one was Buddhist, the other three were vaguely spiritual. We talked politics, religion, and sex – and it was a friendly, good-natured, conversation. fascinating (I mostly listened). It was great company. I wasn’t doing anything. I was just there, enjoying the blessings of a bowl of seafood chowder, a glass of white wine, and some terrific conversation with strangers.

I was blessed.

Sunday after church, I began to drive home. I stopped several times to drive east from the main road and take in a few last beach walks. I walked, no great revelations in my mind. Just a reminder of one I already knew. And that too is one of the values of stopping now and again. Sometimes there is no great thing wrong – we’ve just been moving too fast to understand how much is right with life, and to grasp it and experience it fully. The last beach I walked was Marconi beach, about half way down the Cape. I picked up small white stones that littered the beach, tossed up by the waves. They will be a reminder that these beautiful white stones did not happen because someone made them happen. They happened because they were given the time to become beautiful.

There were a couple of seals there, Curious and unafraid. There were tides coming in. There were small stones at the mercy of waves and large ones firmly planted, holding their ground while sand trickled away from them leaving small rivulets in the sand. I walked, maybe a mile or so. And back.

I was ready. It was time to go home.

Be well. Travel wisely.

Tom

PS: Here’s a picture of the seal. Just because I know you wanted to see it!