Kayaking Tidal Salt Marshes

I often think about St. Irenaeus (don’t you?) and his two books theology—the idea that God has written not one but two books, the little book of the Bible and the big book of Creation, and that the two do not conflict with one another. They cannot contradict each other, because they were both written by the God of the universe. We can look for and find truths about God’s character (which is rooted in everlasting love) in both places.

And so when I was kayaking back in March, I got caught up a little bit in the current of the tidal salt marshes and it made me think about how I long to be carried by the Spirit, to find my rhythm and my groove in what God is doing, rather than trying to rush.

This poem emerged from that meditation, thinking about the beauty of the salt marshes and our human engagement with wild places, about our imprint on those wild places and also the ways that wild things just go about their existence, not oblivious to us and certainly not without being impacted by us, but there, and present, doing their thing, living their beautiful lives.

Meanwhile, how often I fight against that current.

I have no photos of us kayaking because I’m over 40 now and trying to be smarter about choosing practices that will limit losing my cell phone in the ocean.

Kayaking Tidal Salt Marshes

Carry me in your ebb and flow.
This unseen and unheard current
makes it so I can lift my paddle
out of the water and still be moved. 
Here, crabs bud and blossom from 
the mud, then slip unseen away again. 
Anhinga weave and somehow keep 
their heads and necks above the waves,
their bodies in your embrace. I watch
for heron and ibis, wait for the surface
to break with a dorsal fin or the rubbery 
mat of a manatee. The shore is not far. 
The activities of man hum and roar 
as old buildings come down, new 
foundations are poured. A heron 
stands erect, ghost of marsh grasses,
or is it a shadow, spirit animal,
signal of a burgeoning ecosystem
or harbinger of dying shorelines. 
I am only in this kayak as a tourist
longing to live in oneness with
the waters and earth I have come from,
the same that you gave breath and
movement to at the dawn of all,
the same you shape and shift each day.
I’m carried deeper into this marsh. 
If the tide does not shift soon, I will 
have to battle hard to fight against 
the current, work back the way I came. 
Is that even possible? I am loud, 
breathe in sea air in even gasps. 
My paddle slaps the wild waters 
that draw me back for every feeble 
row forward. I am, again, impatient 
to wait for what I wanted all along: 
to abandon myself to your mercies, 
to move and shift and live with you, 
to put my trust in your tide.

My prayer for you today, my friends, is that you would forever be surrendering more and more of your will over to the One who carries you, the one who has all good things in store for you, the one who is holding all things together, whether you are feeling put together these days or whether everything is falling apart around you.

Trust the goodness of God that all things are truly held together, even when they're falling apart.

I bless you and pray that the Spirit would keep you, that you would experience the love that is flowing through all of creation, the creation that is in these wild places and the creation that is right there in your home or in your car or wherever you are right now. All things are embedded with the love of God.

Blessings, friends!