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A Rose Is a Wave Is a Rose

by Jim Andris, Jan. 6, 1994

I am walking along Siesta Beach in Florida. A chill is in the air, and the wind is brisk. It takes just enough energy to walk against the wind to be annoying. I am preoccupied with negative thoughts and frustrations. Grey sky clouds hang in festoons over the ocean. The cold water fans out on the wide, gently sloped beach, leaving foam traces as it retreats.

My lover, Stephen, is also somewhere on this beach, as are Will and Caroline Lutz. Will is my friend from high school. We are in Sarasota to help them celebrate their 32nd wedding anniversary. Will is a highly successful marketing professor and consultant from Cleveland.

This has been a frustrating vacation in a way. Oh, we have been enjoying each others' company, and there's been plenty to do. Still, how often do I get to Florida? I wanted to sun myself on the beach, and there's been nothing but cold and cloudy weather for days now. This weather just seems to reflect the way my life has been going lately. I feel overloaded at work; there seems to be no end to my responsibilities wherever I turn. On top of that, Stephanie, Stephen's daughter, has come home in a deep depression over what she will do with herself. She has been extremely unpleasant to deal with.

As I continue my walk south toward a complex of high rise apartments, I try to bring my attention more to the walk. I force a look at the gliding seagulls now and then, spot a small shell here and there. The sand on this beach is exceptionally fine, Will was telling me. In fact, they call it sugar beach. No sugar here today, I think. This looks more like salt to me.

My mind flashes back to another walk along a Michigan beach five years ago. I've often told the story of the miracle that occurred then. Stephen and I had been together just a couple of years, and we had discovered that we loved Michigan in late August, early September. I was really happy on that day, and as I trod the somewhat browner and rockier Lake Huron shoreline, I spontaneously said to the Universe, "I love you!" Immediately my eyes lit upon a glint of blue just before me in the water. I stooped down to pick it up. It was a piece of blue glass, frosted by the waves and perfectly chiseled into a heart.

The message was immediately clear to me. Blue is the color of the fifth chakra, the throat chakra, which controls clairaudience, and is the seat of gratitude and communication. It is sometimes called the upper heart chakra. This blue heart was a sign of my gratitude, my communion with God. It was as clear as if the Universe had said back, "I love you, too, Jim."

Snapping back into the swirling gray present, I wistfully wonder if I
can possibly ever have such a miracle again. Suddenly, the angry feelings that have been festering beneath my skin surface dramatically. I begin to say to myself, "Yes, I am angry. I'm angry about the fact that I have become disconnected from metaphysical concerns and trapped in a technologically oriented career that separates me from God. I'm angry about Stephanie being such a pain in the ass. And, yes, I'm even angry about these murky waves and cold, brisk breezes." It feels somehow good to express these feelings.

I continue in this vein. "Fifty five years old," I say. "What does it mean to be fifty five years old?" I ponder this question. How much of my life is over? Surely more than 50%. How much time do I have left? Will I ever express myself in music as I have always wanted to? Will I have a decent retirement? I feel sad and discouraged over this turn of thought.

Now I am walking at a brisker pace. My senses are more alert. I begin to notice the curved wave patterns on the sand. Then, right before my eyes, a most amazing display appears. One of the larger, broader waves has cast upon the beach dozens of rose petals. I look closer. Some of the rose petals are a deep, bright crimson, perhaps 20% of them. A greater number of the petals are quite brown. And the remainder are at various stages in between. What is so astonishing is that the wave has cast these petals in a perfect arc along the beach, perhaps 30 feet in length.

This is surely my life before me, I think. This rose is to the ocean as I am to the Universe. Here we are, past our prime. Just like the rose, my facets have been dispersed in the sea of life, affecting a broad arc of experience. And some of my petals are still beautiful, while others have faded and decayed.

I continue to walk south on the beach, slowly trying to make sense out of what is clearly another shoreline miracle in my life. Up ahead is a small stream that cuts the beach in two. An older retired couple, perhaps in their late 60's early '70s, are walking together. The man, quite bow-legged, but rather spry, attempts to jump the stream. His foot catches on the opposite bank of this small rill. I see it clearly; he simply has misjudged and not raised his foot quite enough.

Barn! He falls flat on his face, really hard. He staggers to his feet—his wife trying to steady him—holding his nose. Blood begins to pour from his nose. His wife claws in her handbag for a handkerchief and puts it up to his face. He is still somewhat stunned, but during this whole episode, keeps his forward trajectory. They walk on down the beach, the man with his hand clutched to his face.

As soon as the shock wears off, I realize, although not quite so clearly
as I will realize upon reflection, that the Universe is still talking to me. I do believe in and have written about a process by which I have learned to communicate with God. Miracles—unexplained coincidences of deep personal significance—are one major form of God-communication that I have discovered. After 17 years as an atheist, I had summoned up the courage and the humility to believe in the possibility of God. At age 34, I experienced my first miracle, and have been communicating with Universal Intelligence in the intervening 20 years in this way and in others.

The message of the man's fall seems clear. I come to the stream. I estimate the distance, lift my foot high enough, and come down with precision just on the other bank. I note the agility of my aging body with gratitude. I think that perhaps in the future, should I fall, there will be a lifemate—Stephen, with any luck—to help me to my feet and to offer succor.

I have now been dramatically jogged out of my depression and resentful feelings and into the spacious present. My mind is a jumble of excitement. Bits and pieces of thoughts that have been fragmented now begin to crystalize into a meaningful pattern. Whenever I stray too far from the presence, something, both external and internal, my Spirit, the Holy Spirit, whatever, dunks me in the ocean of seething present possibility.

I think now about the little pre-Christmas miracle. I'm at the Galleria shopping with Stephanie. I literally run into a book store for a minute, and while I am there, dowse a book on dowsing. Except this book is quite sensible—The Divining Mind. I had been reading this book and its clear presentation of the seven levels of dowsing and the tools of dowsing and thinking that this could be a path back into a more metaphysical presence in the world. It seems to fit with my renewed interest in Tai Chi. I am, after all, a practical person when it comes to the spiritual. I would rather be able to do something than to read 10 books on a subject. I have always been that way. As soon as I have even a rudimentary grasp of some area, I
need to get busy and do something practical and concrete with it.

Now it is all clear. I cannot allow myself to remain so engrossed in my
work as technological coordinator for the School of Education, so addicted to the few rewards of the academic system, that I continue to be unplugged from my insatiable curiosity about the spiritual dimension of my experience. I will not allow this. I will go ahead and carry out my commitments to write the two papers, to conduct the research, to complete the program review, to teach in the Leapings program, but that is it!

It amounts to a New Year's resolution. I will, by God, balance my life in this year, 1994, and I will, by God, spend more time with my music, my metaphysics, and my maker.

Again my mind harkens back to a miracle just two nights before. Will and I had taken one of our late night walks along the beach. He had shared a bit with me about some of his frustrations, but this was not his night to talk. That would come later in the visit. That night it was my turn. I was seething with my frustration with Stephanie. I was trying to say—here she is, finished with college, living back at home, and totally uncommunicative with either Stephen or me. Still, the story had come out in rather disjointed snippets. Will had asked me a clarifying question about the situation with Stephanie.

"I think I can explain this to you, Will," I said, "but do you really want to hear all this stuff?"

"Sure," said Will, "I'd be glad to listen. I find it interesting."

With a big sigh, I began to relate my story. I hadn't uttered two words when an enormous meteor flashed through the sky over the dark ocean. I stopped my story and said excitedly, "Wow, did you see that meteor? What a sign from God! But you know what. This isn't about Stephanie. It's about me getting more balance back into my life." I stopped for just an instant and reinforced that as a resolution. Then I continued with my tale.

Once again I am back on the beach by myself, almost to the turnjng point of my walk, which is as far south on the beach as one can go. It will take the rest of the walk for me to completely sort these things out. But by the time I walk from the beach and back to the condo, a certain serene and grounded feeling will have begun to envelop me.

I begin to relate my tale of miracles to Will and Caroline, but before can tell very much, Stephen comes in. He has also been out walking on the beach, much longer than I. He is so cold that he goes in to take a hot shower. Will and Caroline both listen intently to my story.

In the coming days, several more pieces of my new direction are to fall together. Will and Caroline were to have gone back to Cleveland on Monday, but at the last minute, Caroline decides that she wants to stay. After much negotiation, it is decided that Caroline will keep the condo until Wednesday, rent a car, and we will stay on with her for those two days. This turns out to be a very good thing for my spiritual development.

Later Caroline, Stephen and I end up going to a metaphysical bookstore called Elesyian Fields. From the moment I enter the store, I feel a presence, good vibrations. I slither slowly past each new bank of books, my eyes filled with fascinating titles. I end up with yet another book on dowsing and Paul Devereaux's book Earth Mind, which explores the Gaia hypothesis, and even has a section on dowsing and its relationship to Gaia. Too, with Caroline's strong encouragement, I finally buy the Motherpeace tarot deck. I also dowse a book for Stephen on telepathic communication with animals. He reads it avidly in the next day and gives me a report, enriching my own consciousness. For example, this woman maintains that the view that the animals are "lower" than humans is a myth, and that some spiritual lessons are easier to learn in an animal's body, say learning loyalty in a dog's body rathern than in a human's body.

I felt wonderfully exhilirated telling Caroline's fortune with the Motherpeace deck. I loved the multicultural images and the feminine presence and felt my shamanistic tendencies emerge in this atmosphere. The reading was natural and correct, and I hope, helped her to deal with her question concerning whether she should take up some form of formal education or commitment to worthwhile causes. I saw that with more time there was much counseling that I could have, and can still give her. And I felt confirmed in my own intuitive fortune telling, learned at my mother's and grandmother's knee and continued throughout my adult life.

Apparently, had the sun shown, I might have lain upon the beach, felt soothed, and not really dealt with my life's lessons that I was to learn. Just as apparently, this was not really to have been a vacation for Jim, although it certainly was for Stephen. My vacation turned out to be my vocation and with determination may turn my vocation into a vacation. I'm just thankful that the ears and eyes of my heart are open.