“Finding Perspective On a Most Unlikely Beach”
In most respects, this has been a painfully challenging season. And now, the days darken, the cynical and dangerous dispute about the election continues, and the rate of Covid infection again threatens to shut down much of everyday life. It has been and continues to be a time of trouble, with waves of fear and anger that can make it hard to feel God’s presence and to keep daily events in perspective.
But, at least in our part of the world, one bright spot has been the weather. Until the most recent gray and gloom, for the most part, we have been blessed with a beautiful season, covered in blue skies, bathed in bright sunlight, and dazzled by foliage more vivid than I can remember. I’ve enjoyed a spectacular “Fall Festival,” and hope you have, too.
Now, at this point, you may be expecting a story from one of my many walks in Lincoln Park. Wrong! Even those of us deeply set in our ways need to mix things up once in a while! So, a few days before the election, I decided to explore Caven Point, the small nature preserve tucked away at the southern end of Liberty State Park. Despite living in Jersey City for much of my life, I had never been there, but I had heard about it from friends and seen pictures taken there by our parishioner Sara Hopper.
Although Caven Point is not exactly hidden, you do have to know where to look. Getting there requires heading south on a walkway bordered on one side by an imposing retaining wall that seals off the exclusive Liberty National Golf Course from the rest of the community, a stark symbol of the great divide between those who have (and yet always want even more) and those who do not have much at all. After what felt like a longer than expected walk, I finally arrived at the nature preserve, discovering an oasis lush with vegetation and scored by birdsong. I took my time, savoring it all, and, of course, snapping lots of pictures for the “Fall Festival.” At one point, I left the trail and followed a footpath to…a beach! A real beach! Hearing about this miracle and seeing pictures did not prepare me for the reality that Jersey City has a wide sandy beach, dotted with seashells and strewn with seaweed.
I was alone, listening to honking geese and quacking ducks, mesmerized by the ebb and flow of the tide, a little disoriented by a different view of some most familiar landmarks. Although this whole area had long been industrialized, its soil contaminated, there was now not much sign of human activity. Instead, when I squinted a little, I could imagine the Lenape people gathered on the shore, feasting on the overflowing abundance of the sea and the land. I could imagine Henry Hudson sailing into the wide and deep harbor on the Half Moon, hoping to find a quick route to Asia, but recognizing that this place had real money-making potential. Actually, it was so quiet that I could imagine the near eternity before any of that, when there were no people feasting or exploring, just creatures going about their business of survival, only the rhythmic roll of the tide, a time when God was already at work, even if there was no one around to notice.
For a few minutes, anyway, standing on a most unlikely beach, I was able to gain a little bit of perspective, reminded of our small place in the bigness and grandeur of creation, the vastness of the ages. I remembered that, even in a time of trouble, God’s presence is as close as a leaf falling to the ground, providing yet again the promise of new life. I understood that, maybe with a little help from us, God can restore even the most poisoned land, renewing it into a taste of Eden, a glimpse of the way life was always meant to be.
My time at the beach was brief. And, making my way back out of the nature preserve, I returned to a troubled land symbolized by that sturdy wall built to keep the poor away from the wealthy. But, somehow that wall seemed a little less oppressive. Now, I again trusted that God will give us the strength and courage we need to build a world without walls, to realize the downside-up kingdom imagined, proclaimed, and unveiled by Jesus.
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