By nature I am a contemplative soul. It is easy for me to slide away from a house full of people to sit on the beloved back deck and just … stare at the stars. Most often there is music in my ears but not always. I can go to the beach and just sit there staring at the ocean lost in thought. Goddess and I will walk over to Shirley’s sad little holy dock and simply sit there smelling the marsh and listening to choir of mussels and be … content.
A couple of years ago all of the kids were here and we’d eaten dinner and they were watching television with Julie. I slid off to the beloved back deck and was just staring at the stars … thinking … feeling … praying, I guess.
“Why does he do that?” Chelsea asked out loud.
“I don’t know,” Julie answered with a bit of frustration.
I looked through the sliding glass doors through the kitchen into the living room and they were all watching … I don’t know.
As a kid I loved television. I was always the first one up and would sit in the floor with my nose inches from the screen, turning (back then we turned, we didn’t flip!) totally engrossed in whatever was on. My Dad would come in and tell me that I was going to go blind from sitting so close to the television.
I ignored him.
Now, I find it pretty boring. There’s not much that holds my interest. When the Tsunami hit Japan last month I was a day behind the breaking news. I came home from the Breakfast Club where everybody was talking about it and turned on CNN and watched the waves wash the cars and buildings and people.
For the most part I use TV as a radio playing music all day long.
Music is better suited for contemplation.
The older I get, the more I just enjoy the beauty of what is around me. And who chooses to be around me. It is far more entertaining to watch the stars and discover what messages they are sending me than it is to see who dances with them.
My friend Bill Shearouse told me a story about his Dad’s last days. Mr. Shearouse and his wife Bootsie was great people and friends too. They adopted me and my kids at University of Georgia Football games. In his latter days, Mr. Shearouse would sit in the living room looking out of the large plate glass window while everybody else was busy doing something else.
“What you looking at Dad?” Bill asked.
Slowly, Mr. Shearouse pulled himself from the contemplation and looked at his son. “The birds,” he finally said.
Bill looked out the plate glass window and sure enough … there were birds.
“He knew,” Bill explained later when he told me this story. “He was getting ready.” And soon after that Mr. Shearouse died, sitting in his recliner, waiting on Bootsie to bring his desert watching the beloved Dawgs of Georgia on television.
I think that God created this world for a lot of reasons but one of them is for us to delight in it. I’ve seen incredible things just sitting on the beach, the deck and the dock. Possums walk hanging upside down on electric wires. Mussels form themselves into choirs and sing hymns at low tide. On a hot summer day the marsh smells like sex in the tropics. Dolphins dance and smile when they do so. God paints a different masterpiece in the sky every single day.
There are times when someone shares these things with me. Most often it is Goddess my dog. She loves to watch egrets flying over the marsh, squirrels climbing trees and rabbits in the thickets by Shirley’s house.
Sometimes it is others. Trolley Joe and I are fond of standing on the pier staring at the ocean and occasionally saying something to one another. When my son Jeremy is here, he’s taken to sitting on the beloved back deck in silence with me taking it all in. Words are few but the senses are filled to the point of exploding. As someone who makes his living speaking and writing words it is fascinating to learn how unnecessary they are to appreciate … love.
It is raining now and is a good day to do … nothing. Except watch the trees dance in the wind … listen to the songs of the falling water … dance to the claps of thunder … marvel at the lightning … and whisper prayers of thanksgiving that I am part of this incredible gift called life.
