I walked along the Sausalito shoreline last Sunday – a beautiful afternoon. There’s one stretch of marsh south of Schoonmaker Beach with a short-cut path around it that is sometimes partly covered in water. But this time, the tide was low and the path was clear. And out in the marsh, flotsam of boards and rusty iron was visible, coated in greenish-brown muck. The tide was so low that the secrets of the deep were revealed – an interesting sight, though not necessarily a pretty one! Shreds of broken dream boats, splintered planks from shattered harbors, anchors aweigh-ed no more.
Life at ebb tide reveals all that, and more. When contrary currents drain away your soul, you get a view of what lies at its bottom. You are confronted with memories and feelings that once you hoped would sink out of sight forever.
I have never suffered from anything close to a debilitating depression – knock on wood. I did, and I do, nothing to deserve my generally temperate disposition. I have my tides, but they are nothing like those in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, where the sea level rises and falls up to fifty feet. But every now and again, I wake up at 3 in the morning, when my tide is at its very lowest, and I get a taste of what depression might be like. At that hour, the ebbing tide of endorphins in my brain reveals a worry. And then a grudge. And then a bad memory. And then an unresolved conflict. And then a resentment. All are covered in greenish-brown muck. The best I can do is take deep breaths, observe my sad state as calmly and compassionately as I can, and try to remember that the tide will turn. Eventually I fall asleep again, positive brain chemistry quietly and imperceptibly flows back in, and I wake up, usually with a good attitude.
The same ebb and flow comes with the passages of my life. A few years ago I went through a family crisis that was, quite literally, a draining experience. And again, in my most drained moments, I noticed that I obsessed not only about the immediate causes of the crisis, but also about everything else that was wrong. When I’m drained by one thing, everything else lying at the bottom seems to come to the surface. But those are times when I’m least capable of dealing with them. When times are really good, as they are for me today, I am too busy enjoying life to want to clean up the bottom-dwelling problems that I see when I’m drained!
The best I can do is to take the role of the observer, looking with calm and care at the broken jetsam that emerges when the water level sinks. Prayer is like a hike along the shore of the soul, whether it’s full of dancing waves, or drained to reveal the mud and the junk. The observer within me, and within us all, is God – the unbreakable pier, the boat that stays afloat -- divinely attuned to the ebb and the flow of the heart.