Early to Rise

“I want to be on the road by 6.”

Big words from my friend who usually wakes at 11.

Up by 6 though, we got the essentials done. We made banana pancakes and since we forgot to get maple syrup, we concocted a peanut butter and almond milk “syrup” that seemed like it was meant to go with the bananas. What was I missing all my life?

The van seemed to like the sand. Curving up the coast, we carved lightly past people digging clams. Others were sorting through rocks along the dunes, maybe to construct a wall somewhere in town. And dolphins spun up from the ocean in arcs of joy and perfect form for their function: play.

“I just wanna play with my friend in the water,” my buddy exclaims a few times. We are like the dolphins today. Built somehow for joy, we carve again through the sand until we come to the right break. We jump in with the boards. And I decidedly do not carve through anything in the water. I tumble over my beginner board. And my friend has a decade of experience he tries to share in a few minutes. What he doesn’t know is that every missed wave is a celebration. Every nose that dipped under the surface is a deepening of the freedom we share. Blessing doesn’t quite describe it.

We pass the people collecting rocks for a wall on the way back. And the walls that might be someday seem so far from us in this place. And walls that people imagine could separate the people of the world seem both wrong and insane.

But walls come down too at times. “I just want to play with my friend in the water!” And the walls come a tumbling down.

And may it ever be so.

Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org