I never could have imagined things would turn out the way they did.

    It started when Caleb and I were just kids—boys, really.  It was a rainy day; not being able to run around shoot imaginary enemies outside because of rain (or inside for the sake of parental sanity), and having burned straight through our allotted computer game time, we were bored.   As everyone knows, in young males boredom often leads to hunger.  So we started snacking.  It was innocent enough to start with: cheddar cheese, carrots, and apples, but over the next couple years we sought out stronger and stronger flavors.  We tried out smoked cheeses and cold, uncooked hotdogs straight from the fridge, then before we knew it we’ were eating tortilla chips with volcano grade salsa, and stolen ginger snaps.

    I’ll never forget the day I realized how bad it had gotten: when I finally realized things had gone too far.  I was sitting at the bar in the kitchen eating my way through a huge bag of Mission corn chips.  I was eating them straight: no salsa, no queso, not even a glass of water.  Just munch, munch, munch.  One chip after another in an endless line of white that could never leave me satisfied for long.  It wasn’t the log in my own eye that made me see the light, though.  I saw that day what snacking had done to my friend, my brother.  While I munched through the chips he rummaged through the kitchen looking for something better, harder.  I saw his face light up when he found it.

    “You want some spinach?” he asked me.  He pulled a tin can of spinach from the cupboard.  I didn’t even know you could get spinach in a can.  It was strange enough that for once I wasn’t interested—in fact, I was slightly put off my munchies.  It didn’t stop there, though.  He grabbed a can opener and proceeded to dump the dark green slime into a bowl; it landed with a wet splat.

    “You eat that?” I asked in disbelief.

    He reached into another cabinet and pulled out a bottle of white vinegar and dumped a cup’s worth on top.  He swilled it around in the bowl and stuck a fork in it.  Looking up at me with a gleam in his eye, he told me, “It’s really good stuff man.  You should try it!  You’ll like it.”

    I was disturbed by how the fervor in his eyes contrasted with the easy way in which he’d prepared the extreme and intensely flavored dish.  I looked at the bowl in his hands and  I knew I’d gone far enough: THAT was not for me.  “No thanks, man.  I’m good,” I said, not daring to meet his eyes again.

    “Suit yourself,” he said in a flippant tone, and he took his bowl of acidic green goo into the dining room to enjoy it away from my obvious unease.

    I set the bag of chips on the counter and wondered what had become of us.  How had it come to this?  If he so easily ate rotten spinach soaked in vinegar what was next?  Where would it end?

    I still don’t know.

        During a thunderstorm there is something spiritual and yet undeniably physical about the rain, something magical and yet brutally tangible about the wind.  It transports you temporarily to the land of Faerie, mesmerizing you with the amazing shades of gray that slide through the shape-shifting clouds as they travel across the roof of the world in a wild and frantic dance and the fog rolls across the land covering everything in a gentle blanket soft, cool, and damp.

   The forest is especially amazing in these times of renewal.  Before the rain arrives you can hear the creatures large and small preparing to wait out the storm.  The birds grow quiet in expectation, seeking sheltering holes in which to hide.  The squirrels chatter loudly as they scurry about, hiding the last nut or chasing away the last trespasser, then suddenly disappear in silence.  There is a moment of anticipation in which the smell of pent up energy waiting to be released permeates the air causing your spine to tingle and your heart to slightly speed its beat for it knows what is about to come.

    And then it comes.

    Furious and strong, the storm brings us to wonder at the sheer power of our God.  The wind thrashes the trees, spurring them into a frenetic dance of agony and ecstasy.  The rain pelts the leaves, the bark, the stones, in noisy splishes and splashes that surround you with the voices of a great throng, the sound of many waterfalls, the sound locusts wings, and the sound of the sea all at once.  In a symphony of light and sound it reminds us how small we truly are, performing a holy shadow play that blinds us with the light of His face and deafening us with the thunder of His voice.

    As surely as the glory of the Most High humbles us, His grace comforts us: we feel His love in the mild, gentle, rain that follows the chastening storm.  The rain showers the earth with the clear and sweet nectar of life; crystal yet liquid, nearly tasteless, but bearing that subtle and exotic flavor of the clouds.  It splashes off the leaves making patterns and rhythms. Few are the drops that make it to the earth having missed every obstacle in their fall from heaven, yet each have their own identity that they sing to make a music, fast and slow, splashing and flowing through the many levels of the arbor in a Hymn to the Giver of all good gifts.

   After all is spent, the sweet smell of the rain fills the air clear, cool, and crisp.  The leaves on the ground are soaked so that your feet make no noise as you pass; a silent ghost in a sleeping world that is not your own.  The world around you glows, polished clean from its heavenly bath. And then it happens:  the first courageous bird begins to sing, lofting its voice above the trees, letting all know that life has been granted to all, if only for another precious day.  Answering its song, the forest slowly comes to life as each animal returns to its many cares.



    We truly live in a beautiful world.

    Praise be to The Maker and Sustainer, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, our Savior, That Blessed Trinity, The Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.

    In Nomeni Patri, Et Fili, Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Like most people, the ocean has always fascinated me; its vastness, like the dark expanse of a star studded sky, thoroughly immerses me in the knowledge that I am all too finite.  Yet unlike the sky, which fills with me with hope—as I marvel that the God who made the Cosmos knows and cares for me—the sea overwhelms me with a sense of mystery marked with a distinct undercurrent of fear.  In my imagination innumerable hosts of myriad forms of life teem just beneath the churning surface, and my mind swims with the endless possibilities found in the massive breadth and depth of the sea.

Frankly, it terrifies me.

Deep water has always scared me and I know exactly why: there might be something down there.  I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the world isn’t as thoroughly explored, as completely known, and as neatly explained as the scientific establishment tells us.  The attitude that modern man has uncovered all the earth’s deepest secrets—that that are no mysteries left on earth—that is so universally displayed by the major scientific media is pure hubris.

I find it incomprehensible that every time an animal that had been label ‘extinct’ is found alive and well, every time a once legendary creature is found to actually exist, every time a remote volcanic crater is found to host a dozen new species that coexist in an entirely unique ecosystem, the scientific community somehow manages to spin the story to communicate that the last great mystery of the world has been found and that we know everything there is to know and that there can be no more new, undiscovered creatures anywhere in the world, when each and every instance of discovery proves just the opposite!

Thus it is that I have never outgrown the fervent hope and the niggling terror that one day I might encounter one such unknown entity.  That possibility has always seemed the most likely, and thus the most terrifying, when I’m in or on deep water.  I have never allowed this fear to stop me from enjoying the water, however.  Despite the ever-present fear that something dark, silent, and powerful might drag me under anytime I was in water over my head, I grew up fishing, swimming, and canoeing on the Tennessee River, and I have thoroughly enjoyed every trip I’ve made to and on the ocean.  The river grants a peaceful restoration of the soul through its serenity, and the crash of the ocean surf mesmerizes me into a restful, trance-like state of mind through its ceaseless shushing.

Tonight, though, something new happened to me.  The water, as nice as it is, is not a human’s natural habitat, and being on terra firma has always provided me with the sense of security which comes from being in one’s element.  It was only when I was in the water that I feared that something might get me—until tonight.

It was quite late and I sat on the shore of Oak Island under the dark of an overcast and moonless sky watching the Elizabeth River surge into the sea as I silently and sleepily pondered life and enjoyed leisurely smoking my pipe.  Because of the current of the river and the shape of the bay, there was almost no surf where I was and the water was surprisingly calm—until the wake of a boat long since out of sight finally reached the shore.  The long wake lines were at an angle to the beach in front of me and as they crashed in they created an illusion of a long procession of great, dark fish rushing along the beach in the shallows, each one leaving behind a thin foam wake that slashed up the beach in front of me.  Without interrupting my thoughts, these huge, illusory ‘fish’ reminded my subconscious of the life teeming in those waters.

A cold fog rolled in across the water from my right, reducing visibility to a few feet and suddenly the constant, rapid pounding of the surf on the shore became the synchronized steps of thousands of feet, and the numerous, rising ripples of the boat’s wake became rank upon rank of soldiers marching forward out of the water to capture the beach after having been dropped, like paratroopers all in a line, in the shallows by the great fish speeding by me.  As the fog thickened the organic, steam-like sounds of a pod of porpoises blowing became the sound of mermen breathing and the phantasmal army was upon me.

Never before had the thought occurred to me that something might come out of the water and get me, but suddenly my comfortable illusion of safety disappeared as completely as my pipe smoke in the fog.

It required every ounce of my will power to refrain from running screaming back to the lodge.




As the wake passed up the beach the army marched inland until the sound of their footsteps was no more and the fog slowly cleared.  Never before had my imagination so completely terrified me; and as the last patch of fog, which had seemed to linger around me feeding off my smoke, finally wafted away leaving me alone I sat perfectly still and trembled in the silence as I contemplated an idea for a new story.

© Andrew J. Goggans 2012