Meditation at Pine Neck Beach

    
                                                            Pine Neck Beach 5-21-15
     
      I live surrounded by water, two short blocks to a beach on Peconic Bay, which divides the north and south forks of the East End of Long Island. The beach on the bay side is rockier and the water more shallow than the ocean beaches five miles away. But it's close and friendly to this user,  being a two minute walk away. I look forward to kayaking off that beach or  launching from the little cove behind it soon. Or maybe just hanging out on a noodle in the water when it gets a little hotter.

     I took myself to Pine Neck Beach this morning for my meditation. The air was cool, but pleasant. As I settled myself on one of several memorial benches neighbors have placed there, I closed my eyes and began to breathe a little more deeply. The cool air was from a northerly breeze and it warmed as it came through my nostrils and went to my lungs. The breeze cooled my face, but not uncomfortably. Normally at this hour so close to Memorial Day weekend, the bang of hammers would compete with leaf blowers and other machine noises to disturb the  tranquility. Not so this day. The main sounds were the breeze-driven mini-waves on the bay, various birds calling back and forth, and the odd jet airliner far aloft, heading into New York almost 100 miles away. I could also hear a truck grinding up on Noyack Road. A beach neighborhood slowly coming to life was the setting for my attempt to quiet the mind and heart, and remember my place in it all.

     What I am slowly learning to accept is that I don't have to do this meditation thing perfectly for it to have meaning and impact on my life. Attempting to harmonize my breathing and my body with this air, redolent with life and energy,  is its own result......getting just a little more quiet and a little more peaceful in my acceptance of this moment, that all is indeed well and that I don't have to do anything.......that's plenty of result. Healing my jagged edges and jangled nerves for just a few minutes? Priceless.

     There's something iconic about water for us as humans. We're soothed by it, stretched by it, become better when we're near it often.....not in some moral accountancy way, but in a soul and spirit enriching way. I feel paradoxically smaller and larger being by it -- smaller as a part of a vast web of life and matter above and below the waters -- and larger for being able to celebrate the whole of it, loving its wide vistas and deep currents. Glory and honor to creation and its Maker.