I’ve taken my Sabbatical on the road. Aside from a brief break from it to do work in other cities, I’ve mostly stayed in the small geography surrounding my beloved back deck. For the next couple of weeks though it is a visit back to some of the holy places in my life.
So that there is some perspective, several years ago I wrote that I love living at the beach and vacationing at another beach! And that is a very true statement about who I am. I fell in love with the ocean when I was a child and can still remember the sun dancing on the sea as my Dad drove us around the big curve on Tybee as he took the family went to the beach. I’ve never not been hooked.
Today I sit beside Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island in north Florida. Chelsea drove my Mom and me down here for the annual pilgrimage to the Georgia/Florida game, as holy an experience as there is in college football.
Two years ago I was able to convince my Dad to make his last trip to this place. He was tired and worn and sick but he made it. And he had one of the lat blasts of his life with the kids and family all swirling around him. It is nice to return here and remember that. He loved the ocean too and we would sit on the balcony staring at it in silence and I could feel a bit of him as I did that this morning.
On the drive down Chelsea asked me to name my “all time favorite” Jimmy Buffett song. I’m not sure that’s possible. “Breath In, Breath Out, Move On,” I told her.
Then I said, “No wait, let me tell you a story. When I was in Seminary it was a bitter cold February morning with snow flurries in the air. It was 7:50 in the morning and I had just parked under a leafless naked tree when the D.J. on the radio announced the new Jimmy Buffett song and it was the first time that I ever heard “Fins.”
“She came down from Cincinnati, it took her three days on the train, looking for some peace and quiet, hopes to see the sun again…”
At that moment I knew that I would be moving to Tybee Island. It took several more years but we pulled it off and it is the only home that Chelsea has every known. And there is a holiness that blankets that crazed beach town and God blesses it daily with new acts of creation every day.
Then on Sunday I return to St. Martin and this will be the first time that I’ll be there without the demands of work back home constantly interrupting me. I may stick the cell phone in the freezer when I get there so that Conner won’t have to even give it a thought. When I was there in June, I resigned Union Mission, stood on the beach talking on the cell daily, ran up a $4000 phone bill, until Conner came over and took it from me. He put it in the freezer as he handed me a beer.
This time there will be none of that. St. Martin is also the last place that I was married and with her. It was last Christmas and I recall it fondly though looking back now I can see how it was all coming to an end and I just didn’t know it.
I have a history of dancing a lot when I’m in St. Martin. I mean almost every single night. There is this little restaurant that is walking distance from the tiny beach studio that I stay in and it has music most nights. Dancing just comes natural in the Caribbean and my friend Carlos who runs the place can mimic every dancer except me.
“You do this crazy thing with your arm that I just can’t get down,” he laughs with me.
It is time for this Sabbatical to have the joy of dancing in it. Bar stools and beach chairs and waking up with the sun shinning on my face. And when I am there, the plan is to say goodbye to the past. And hello to …everything else!
