SEA > I

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.” 

―Terry Tempest Williams

There is a sticker on the back of a Prius that says "Sea > I." As someone who has grown up in and around the christian faith, this sticker sums up my current belief system. The sea is greater than I. I am the closest to God, the mystery, spirit, the mother, the universe.... when I am immersed in natural forces bigger than I am. There is a balance. Some days the sea is wild and angry, and some days it is calm, and some days it is playful.... but it is always in motion. Everything is always in motion. Change is a part of the stillness. The only rule is balance.

I left the church when I was 16. I was full of questions that I did not have the space to ask. I wondered why and how the world around me worked and I was falling in love with a boy and subsequently, myself.  This was a pivotal point in my life. It has taken me a long time to unravel the rules and regulations of my faith in the "church" from the faith that I have now. The faith in being alive and the secret glue holding everything in place. For meaning and connection that occurs in daily life. I spent of time looking for my faith, as if it had run away and could be hiding somewhere under a rock, or in a book, or in a stranger's eyes.... but the harder I looked for it, the less connected I felt. It seemed faith had left me.

What I didn't realize was that it had been with me the whole time. That my faith didn't fit into the mold it had grown in. I found my faith in love. My first love was wild and sweet. We spent our days in the mountains learning. Learning uncondition. Learning love. Learning life. Learning our bodies. Learning all the time. His love encouraged me into my own. It gave light to how much love was inside of me. It became more and more obvious that the love I had been seeking from outside myself, had to be generated within. Coincidentally, the more that I loved myself the more love I was able to give and the more love ended up flowing back. I believed in this boy. His lesson in my story was to lead me back to myself. To my own truth of love, and how I could move through the world in a way that helped me live in balance with everything else. He made sense. I made sense. And I began to seek the truth (if there was one) by looking in the different stories built into societies and religions. I read many different texts, The Baghavad Gita, The I Ching, the Bible, Gilgamesh, The Tao te Ching, The Tao of Pooh, The Four Agreements and in them I looked for the similarities. The underlying message that tied them together. Nature and truth slip through in every. single. one.

I compared the time period they were framed in. How different faiths served the communities they were created in. The wars and struggles that took place, the messages sleeping under all of the chaos. The delivery differs between the text, but they infer that there is some form of loss that leads to self discovery that leads to detachment and acceptance that leads to love. In almost every text there is a point in which the characters must leave their communities and usually engage with the natural world and their own stillness in order to contact their truth. Once solidified in their mission and how they serve the world, they return and can live a fruitful and meaningful life with all other beings. As a young woman, I carried guilt around the ego, and vanity. I struggled to embrace my own self worth for fear of seeming vain. I didn't have a platform that supported my own belief in my beauty. My first love helped me lay the foundation for my self worth. He was the support I needed to propel me into the curiosities and talents and values that nurtured me. Nature was one of them. 

Around this time I stumbled upon this quote from Marianne Williamson:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I realized that I was my own worst enemy, and that in embracing my fullness I could embrace the whole world. When we learn and embody our true selves, we trust not in our ability to stay the same, but to rise and fall and crash and dive through the unknowns and to come out a consistently newer and truer version of ourselves. It takes standing through the fire to learn what remains when everything else is taken away. We find our strength in our humanness. In our flaws. In the strength and limitation of our human bodies. And in the quality of our connection to others.

When I found my gift, I scoffed at it's simplicity. At the elusiveness of it. At how simple and complex it is. My gift is paying attention. I feel the world around me. I do not numb myself down more than necessary, and I let emotion run its course through me. Most of all, I try to love each person I encounter at the exact point in life they are when I encounter them. I draw the connections and see through the walls and share the world I experience in flux with everything else. This is my gift. 

Now, I sit here with four years between me and an academic institution, ten years between me and a religious institution, and an entire lifetime between my creation and who I am now. I have pure faith that there is meaning to it all. I find peace in my smallness. I do not think there is any one truth, but rather a truth that is in constant motion. The truth evolves as our humanity advances. It moves with our interaction with the universe, and it is time for us to slow down and listen to how each one of us can play our role within the whole. When we meet each person with trust and love rather than fear and hate, as if every person we approach is the sea, we find compassion. We meet a being that we know has more depth and wildness than we will ever fully understand, but is a part of the thing that sustains us. 

When I dive into this system of change I feel complete and whole. I feel connected to the nature of life. An endless cycle of life and death. I can acknowledge that sea is greater than I, and it swims in tears down my face. My own body is 72% ocean. Faith isn't something outside me. It isn't someone outside of me. It is me. It is the entire ocean and universe of me, as I am. When every person is this portable ocean and compact reflection of the universe, we find billions of truths living together. We are the truth. Our existence is a truth within a truth. While we are alive, there is some unspoken belief that our lungs will continue to move air through our bodies and that our eyes will open each morning. And when the day comes for me to fall, for us to fall to earth, and again become the entire sea.... I can rest knowing that sea is greater than I. I am the sea. I am the greatest I.