Written in the Sand

WRITTEN IN THE SAND

Written in the sand or written in sand? What’s the difference? Both are, elusive, ephemeral easily erased by erosion, finally disappearing altogether. But standing on the shore that shifts and gives with your weight and begs for an inscription, inspired or unconscious, your life is written in the sand. It’s carved on the damp impressionable verge where facts and feelings are set down for a season, then erased by waves. Each ridge and valley of the letters fills with swirling foam, cleansed by currents arising from the deep places of the sea, then vanishes.

Bending to write in the sand, your skin is alternately sun-warmed and breeze-cooled by shifting clouds scudding across the iridescent sky to the cry of gulls. You strive and toil to get the words exactly right only to realize that even before you leave, waves will wash away any mistakes. Here, for good or bad, whatever you write will soon be swept clean. As you’re standing or stooping or crouching on the edge of something immeasurable and timeless, you are confronted with the recognition of impermanence and insignificance and the vast variety of creation inscribed in the hand of God. Soon your transitory words written in the sand, along with the worries and failures and petty triumphs they represent, will all be washed away by the eternal Word, leaving the smooth, blank sand of endless possibility.