Communion on the Beach

I’m an introvert, so I break out into a sweat if a stranger says “hi” to me in the morning on my walks.  I have been known to turn around or cross the street to avoid having to say “hi” to someone.  I have learned to walk with my head down, because eye contact encourages people to talk.

Being an introvert doesn’t mean you don’t like people.  I love people.  I am blessed with a number of friends and recently I have been taking long two-three hour lunches with many of them.

But strangers terrify me.

Which is why I nearly jumped out of my Tevas this morning when I lowered my camera after taking about a hundred shots of a massive group of brown pelicans drifting on the ocean, and discovered a woman standing almost right on top of me, so close her shoulder was inches from brushing mine.

She was staring out at the pelicans and even after I lowered the camera she didn’t say anything for the longest time and then … “I’ve never seen them like that before,” she said.

“I’ve seen white pelicans in large numbers like that,” I told her, “but not brown pelicans.”

She continued to stare at the ocean.  “Can you send me one of your pictures?” she asked me, chuckling.  It wasn’t a real request, more just a statement that the birds meant that much to her.  “I draw birds,” she added.

A minute later, we moved on.  She was heading south, and I was just starting my walk north.  I am always shocked when strangers approach me.  It happens so infrequently that I try to take each encounter seriously.  Who has God sent to me today?  What can I learn from this person?  What can I offer them?

I was still thinking about the strange woman half a mile up the beach when I turned to the ocean to try to get a picture of a pelican backlit by the sun.  Again I was focused on getting the right shot and again, I nearly had a heart attack when I lowered the camera and discovered, this time, a man standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder, trying to see what I was taking a picture of.

He gave me a huge toothy grin.  “Hi!”

I managed a smile back.  “Hi,” and then I hurriedly scurried back down the beach.

Was it because I was carrying two cameras today instead of one?  Did people look at me and think “Oh, this is a serious photographer, I have to talk to her.”

On my way back down the beach, I found what first appeared to be the world’s smallest snake, a beautiful, foot long, green and yellow specked reptile, curled in the sand.  I squatted down in front of it, letting my toes sink into the sand to steady myself.  I zoomed in with my camera and saw the creature’s round pupils.

It was a beauty.

“You’re the last thing I expected to find on the beach today,” I said to it.

I walked around it.  I took pictures from all angles and then moved away.

A few feet later, I heard a shout behind me.

It was the man from earlier, with his big toothy grin and bright orange t-shirt.  He was running through the sand toward me.

“Did you see it?” he called to me.  “A snake?”

He slowed to a stop in front of me.

“Yeah, yeah, I saw it,” I said to him.  Part of me was wary of being approached by a strange man on the beach, but his smile was infectious.

I showed him the pictures on my camera and then he and I walked down the beach.  It was just five minutes or so until we both got back to the parking lot, but in that time, I learned his name that he was former military, that he had a twelve-year-old son and that he was working on writing some short stories.  He wanted to write at the beach.  He called it “J.K. Rowling it.”  He said he got inspiration from watching people at the beach.  He told me I would probably wind up in one of his stories.

I didn’t tell him that he was going to wind up in my blog a few hours later.

Yesterday, I met up with a friend of mine to watch the sunrise at the beach.  We arrived at the beachside park when it was still dark, when the sky was just hinting at pink along the horizon.  We were the only two cars in the parking lot.  We walked for miles.  The seas were rough and though most of the time I stay out of the water when walking the beach, yesterday I found myself, more than a few times, pounded and slapped at by the waves.  It was difficult walking.

And yet I enjoyed every minute of it.

Why?

It was the first time I had ever watched the sunrise with a friend.

I have watched the sunrise with strangers, with people I think might have been angels in disguise.

But this was the first time I watched the sunrise with a friend, with someone who was just as spiritually hungry as I was and knew how nourishing it is to watch a sunrise, to watch the darkness peel away and the sunlight pierce and shatter the night.

It is important to share our experiences with others, whether it’s watching the pelicans with strangers on the beach, or finding someone so excited about nature they run you down on the beach to tell you what they’ve found, or watching a sunrise with a friend.

“Where two or three are gathered,” Jesus said. 

Amazing things can happen.

(Note: Not a snake at all, but an Eastern Glass Lizard.)