Tag: skipping stones

The Pebble’s Splash

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photo by Josh Scholten

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
~Blaise Pascal

Most days I’m the ocean rocked by the most minute ripples.  The building waves created by forces beyond my control feel tsunami-like though they probably started out small.  I can do nothing but let them flow over, around and beneath me, riding them up and down, trying not to get submerged for long and not get sea-sick.  Lately it feels like a barrage: instead of letting up, the billows roll larger and mightier, at times relentlessly powerful, changing everything in their path.

Instead of being the rippled, I hope some time to become the rippler in a way that can move oceans or mountains or most amazing of all, another soul, just once.  In some tiny way, I hope I can say or do or write something that makes a positive difference in someone’s life, and that person forwards the ripple, spreading the wave a little further, a little broader, a little deeper to affect others.  Traveling far beyond the original thrown pebble, it can never to be pulled back once it is let loose.

I know what it is like for a blog post to go viral, becoming an ocean in churning turmoil, not a mere pebble starting with a least movement.  Instead, I hope to be the most insignificant of change agents, barely there, just moving enough of another heart and soul to start something that will grow and spread by itself, wild and wonderful.

I don’t know what it might be or how I might do it.  Perhaps it is as simple as skipping rocks, choosing the best flattest pebble, rubbing the smooth sides between my fingers, and with a momentary regret at giving it up to the ocean, I’ll haul back and just let it go.  It will skip once, twice, three four five even six times and then disappear below. The surface of the water will never be the same again.

Nor will I.

photo by Josh Scholten

Lenten Meditation: Cast Me Not Away

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Psalm 51:11

Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Usually tucked away in one of my pockets of my lab coat at work, or in my jean pocket at home, or in a pocket of my purse is one of several small smooth stones that I keep.  I prefer them a bit flat, with a nice depression that is perfect for my thumb to nestle in as I hold the stone in my pocket.  It is a reassuring feeling to hold onto something that is so solid, so ancient and which traveled many miles,  bumped and ground to a silky smoothness just to end up in my pocket.  These are stones that I spend time harvesting at my favorite southwestern Vancouver Island shore, where the newly named “Salish Sea”  pours out from Puget Sound through the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the Pacific.  I probably should be declaring them at the border when we return home, but I’m never sure how to put a value on a ziplock bag of perfect “holding” stones.  I think the border guard would likely confiscate them and I’d have a lot of explaining to do.

Ostensibly I’m picking up these rocks to try my hand at skipping them on the surface of the water.  That is only my excuse.  But I’m a miserable skipper, yielding rarely more than four skips per stone.  I guess I might be more aptly called a “stoner”.   I actually can’t bear to let the best ones go, perhaps never to be heard from again.   They would truly be lost forever.  To cast them away, to actually feel them leave my hand, is a painful act.

I suspect God feels that same anguish at letting go of one of His children.  We are not flung away for His entertainment (how many skips can this one make?), nor are we thrown away in anger.  We are cast away from God’s hand when we could have chosen to cling to Him when we needed Him most.  We too often let go when He urges us to stay.   He wants us firm and solid in His hand, having been sanded and ground to a fine sheen by the bumps and bruises of life.   He snugly holds us,  His thumb nestled in the depression of our soul.

Tucked away in God’s pocket forever.