Sunday 19th July 2009 - Mark 6:30 - Melanie

I came across this story recently.
A 9 year old had recently moved with her family from the grey smoky environment of post war Liverpool, to the wild west coast beach of Piha, just outside Auckland, New Zealand.
The little girl enjoyed the joy and freedom of running barefoot over the dark heavy sand to get to the rock pools. She enjoyed searching for treasures and catching glimpses of life in another dimension ; she was captivated by the smell of the sea, its pure saltiness undiluted by fog or fumes.
She especially enjoyed watching the red and purple crabs. They were bigger than anything she had seen before. They skittered along the sand and rocks, sliding and dancing on the wet surface as they moved out of sight.
She was so enchanted by the crabs that she wanted to capture the moment. So she hid a dead red crab’s shell in her pocket. When she got home, she wrapped it in cotton wool, and safely put it in a flat red elastoplast tin rescued from the rubbish. Then she buried the tin in the depths of her woolly jumper drawer.
The crabshell only came to light many months later when a less than fragrant smell overcame her mother when she was sorting out clothes. She was scolded for her silliness and the crab, now drab, its riotous red ruined by decay, was thrown in the bin.
I was reminded of the story when I read the gospel reading for today.
Jesus’ words to his disciples, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while’,
are familiar to us.
We all know the need to rest.
What though is surprising is the point in the story where this phrase occurs.
The disciples had returned to Jesus full of excitement
about what they had been doing and teaching.
We can almost sense the buzz of eager students
anxious to tell their teacher about their success.
My reaction would have been – fantastic
Now go and do some more.
Jesus again pulls us up short with his response –
come away to a deserted place and rest.
The contrast couldn’t be more marked.
From a hive of activity
to rest and retreat
So often we try to organise ‘quiet day’s’ when life is less busy ;
when work is less stressful ;
when activities at home stop.
In fact the time most of us probably need a quiet day
is when life is at full pelt.
When the children are screaming
there’s a pile of washing up to do,
another meeting to attend
another deadline to meet.
It’s at these points that we need to step back
and create a few moments of space ;
of time when we can be with God.
It is through stepping back that we are able to
then step forward.

How then does the story of the crab fit into this?
I think that the times of stepping back –
those odd moments of space –
or even a whole day’s quiet,
are like rock pools.

They mirror the time available to us
between the tides of life’s routines which govern our day.
They are like pools of provision
that offer a few hours in which to explore what might
be revealed about God ;
they give us a chance to contemplate
and the chance to be caught up in the mystery of creation
to become children again
surprised by discoveries about ourselves and our God.
Rock pools are attractive.
There is always the possibility that something wonderful will be revealed in the next one that we dip into.
We know from our experience of God that there is always something more –
because God is a creative God who wants to engage in creation and longs to include us.

Rock pools need a discipline of stillness and attention.
It is easy to give a pool only a passing glance
because there seems to be little of interest.
But when we make ourselves stop and wait and watch,
we often find that a tiny movement takes our attention,
and we witness something special –
a starfish tentacle,
or a flash of tiny fish.
God’s delicate touch –
a wisp of the spirit’s breath,
a tender word,
a minute shift in our interior landscape,
tiptoes into the receptivity of our silence.

When the surface of the pool is disturbed by wind
or made opaque by cloud cover,
we are reminded of life’s demands
and how hard it can be to make space
to honour the interior life and give
attention to our personal well being.

In rock pools we catch glimpses of shy creatures
retreating into safety,
like ideas whose life is not yet ready to be seen.
With patience and time,
both will reappear and allow their reality to be explored.

Of course we don’t need to find rock pools each time we need a time of quiet.
It is possible to have noisy activities around us, and still adopt an interior silence.
We just need to look closely at the reality of our creation.
It might be part of the woods nearby,
the flight of a bird,
or the neighbour’s baby learning to walk.
Whatever we do, all of us need to move away from the bustle of busyness into the rhythm of the natural world again.

We are reminding ourselves of our humanity
and mortality,
our blossoming and our beauty,
our fragility and our fruitfulness.
More importantly we are giving our passionate
ever pursuing God
the chance to catch up
and sit awhile with us in the silence that only lovers share.

So, in these times of intense activity,
where many of us have a tendency to rush rather than rest
let us take moments out,
times when we can dwell with God,
and times when we too can ‘come away to a deserted place and rest a while’.

Questions for discussion

Are there points in your lives where there is stillness and rest?

What do you think about Jesus idea of ‘come away’ when life seems to be in full swing.

Some people ‘diarise’ quiet times ; others fit quiet times in when needed. What do you find is the best method for you.