Deep Blues

Only the ocean knows the depths of its blues.  Only I know mine.  We share deep blues that reach down into our very core.  We are replete, with unknown origins, for who enclosed the waters with doors, the insides with flesh, when they burst forth and went out of the womb?  We are subjects of creation, our beings given, and not chosen, for who marked the boundaries and the skin color and set the bars and doors and the DNA that would define our shorelines?  With no illusions of control, we understand we're at the mercy of the One who sets our limits, that are this far, but no farther.  At the mercy of the One who tells us where the waters of our pride must stop.  We are infinitely mysterious, no human ever able to fully explore us, for who has walked our depths?  We have depths that teem with things that bite and with treasures that bless, without warning.  We are, both of us, sublime, even in chaos, with a bestowed peace that surpasses understanding.  We are, both of us, turbulent, with a summoned fury that rages beneath.  We are, both of us, hushed when rebuked, by our Maker.  

We are, both of us, deep blue beautiful, with a grace that leaves a shine in the wake... in foam that whispers wisdom, floating up, to the top. 

I suppose it's why we are attracted to one another.  I always am setting out from the wings of the morning, reaching towards her, that I might rest my feet in her salty warmed waters; and she ever reaching out from her uttermost parts, washing up on the shore towards me, that she might touch my weary weathered skin.  I've always felt a familiarity with the ocean.  A sense of belonging... together.  A sense of knowing... and being known.  A sense of shared secrecy.  Both of us understanding what it means to be pierced and seared by Pain and pierced and seared with Beauty.  But there is something more... something greater... something extraordinary... about the deep blues that hold the islands of Hawaii.  Something that called out to me as deep calls to deep in the roar of thundering waterfalls.  Something that rolled me over, like the waves and the breakers of Big Beach, until I lied down to surrender.  Knowing my heart would ever love, and be loved, by the deep beautiful blues of Maui.

The first time I walked her land that lives in the deep blue wide waters of the Pacific Ocean, I was there for a vacation.  It was a short visit when I was young and naive and knew everything and nothing at all.  But I knew... that I loved her.  Or even more it was that I sensed that I was loved by her.  Because I bonded with an island.  And an island... she bonded with me.  A bond that would pull us back together many times over the years.  Forming an attachment.  That would result in my running to her, to her land set out in her deep blues, where I knew that I could seek and that I would find...  refuge.  That was big enough. For Pain and Beauty.  Mine and Hers.  Because she knows and has her own share of Pain and knows and has her own Beauty.  I ran there knowing that if I could ride across the heavens, I might find, if only for a little while, respite.  From evil.  Evil that was chasing me and my family down.  Stalking us.  To steal.  Our joy.  Our peace.  Our lives.  We needed refuge for our pain and our beauty.  In a place where we would be safe, for a while, so that we could heal.  And I hoped that her fierce love would be poison to the evil that was seeking to destroy.  So we went to that sanctuary. Where evil would come to visit but could not stay because it hates her fierce love.  Her aloha.  That rests in the deep blue waters on an island named Maui.

Being hurt.  Over and over.  By someone I love deeply.  Over and over again.  Exposed for me the core of who I am.  Helped me.  Explore my depths.  Took me down to the origin of old wounds, that had waited so long for healing.  Took me all the way into the caverns of my depravity, that hid in desperate need of love.  And revealed to me the first real glimpses.  A shadow that I began to see in the deep blue waters.  Reflecting.  Beauty, that lives, in the midst, of it all.  Where the world crashing against me does not care, but Maui did.  She cared.  About Pain and about Beauty.  And hated evil.  You can see it all over her shores.  She too has seen, in the deep blue waters, the reflection... Baring Beauty.  

Hawaii knows what it is liked to be hurt. By someone she let into the heart of her land.  By someone she risked to love deeply.  Over and over for a long time.  Being hurt.  Deeply.  And loving.  Deeply.  All the time.  She knows.  What it's like to be deeply bared.  She's had practice in the deep blues.  History.  That she has worked into her land.  Pain and Beauty rolled over together in fierce waves again and again until the waters are made clean.  Restoring aloha upon aloha on her warm sand beaches until her people are bathed in goodness.  She knows what its like.  She's seen it before.  And she knows.  That Pain and Beauty need space.  To do their alien work.  And she also knows... how to get rid - of Evil.  Shortly after our arrival, we were told that Maui would either pull people close and love them like family, or chew them up and spit them out from her shores.  And it was true.  She did both.  She pulled us in close and loved us as one of her own.  And chewed evil up and spit it out from her shores.  We were safe there, for a while.  I was safe there.  For a while. In a land of refuge.  Joy for me.  I am forever thankful.  For her land and her family, that welcomed us in as their very own.  And still do.  Thank you.  Really.  Thank you, Maui.

Being hurt.  By someone I let into my heart.  Deeply.  By someone I risked all to love.  Deeply.  Over and over for a long time.  Being hurt.  Deeply.  And loving deeply.  All the time.  Has been so baring.  Is still so deeply baring.  It continually takes me to the depths where my humanity is bared and exposed to a bottomless pit of Pain.  Baring Pain.  That strips me of the belief that I am good down in the core because I see the raw truths of my own depravity up against Beauty.  Bared for me.  That lets me know where I stand.  At the mercy of the One who loves me, by the boundless grace, through a gift that was given to me.  Baring Beauty.  

Beauty.  Knows.  What it means.  To be hurt.  Over and over for a long time.  By someone He lets into His heart.  Deeply.  Baring.  Beauty.  Knows.  The real meaning of being some One who risked all.  To love.  Deeply.  All the time.

Maui and me, we see.  We do.  We see in our reflection of the deep blue waters...  Baring Beauty.  Is not me.  Is not her.  Both of us, masks of dust, sharing this space In the Land of the Living.  Where we can touch the mere edges but will never fully understand.  How Pain, and yes, even Evil, are being worked, rolled over again and again in the fierce waves of mercy and the shining wake of wisdom and the white foam of grace.  For good.  Creating blue, deep blue Baring Beauty.  With us, being made new every day.

Like the ocean.  Like me.  Like Hawaii.  Our deep blues.  Being made deep blue beautiful new. Every day.

©2017 JWhitman all rights reserved

Waves of mercy.  Foaming with grace.  The ocean.  And me.  And Maui.  Being made deep blue beautiful new every day.