A Walk on the Beach...

The gift of writing is a mystery. For years I thought my writing path was to be published and when I was published and published it was not enough. And so I began the journey into an exploration of the true gift of being a writer and what I have discovered is the path of the writer is one of soul.

Recently I was at a writing workshop on the beach and we went on a walking mediation.
I would like to share what I wrote. A note in case you do not know the reference. "Sitting zazen" is Zen mediation.

The Gulls

Gulls sit zazen around a dead fish.
I near and one gull screams
claiming the kill.
The others sit zazen.
I wonder how long the meditation lasts.
The fish is only one-quarter eaten.
Amidst so many white and gray robed monks,
the one gulls screams, saffron beak
claiming the kill.
The others stand, unmoving on spindly legs.
I wonder if I were a sea gull,
would all life be a prayer.

And then I walked on and noticed strange patterns in the waves that slowly rolled up the sand in an ever-expanding X pattern, eddying up the beach until dissolving in the foam and that magic place betwixt and between where the water meets the boundaries of sea and air. If I left my body to find that magical place betwixt and between, of unseen boundaries, what would I find?

What freedom lay in the magic places?

To travel there, I send my spirit into the diaphanous cosmos where water meets land and air. And seagulls sit zazen and the business of my life seems far away. There it is easy to see that all and everything is love and love is all and everything.

Betwixt and between, light and dark, neither exist, both exist, all exists. As I exist betwixt and between, in the alchemical moments of breathing and loving and living and fearing and laughter and hate, each is the other, a magical place of sitting zazen with the seagulls guarding their next meal.