CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D. www.CrossCurrents.us

Is Life a Beach?

There is no vacation from God, they always told us. And beaches are the proof.

Sooner or later, summer eventually finds me sitting on a sand chair reading a trashy thriller while the tide runs out on the beach in Marshfield, Massachusetts. This part of the New England coast, midway between Boston and Plymouth, is known for marshy flats and sandy coves and inconsistent surf and consistently frigid North Atlantic waters.

There are perfect days when body surfing is irresistibly tempting, stormy days when foamy swells spray high over the sea wall, and sun-baked days when the calm ocean resembles a vast salt lake. The particular stretch I frequent changes character often, even overnight, as a single tide may chop two feet of sand off the beach and expose wide swaths of boulders – only to cover those boulders the next tide, moving a massive sandbar to accomplish the job.

It’s easy, relaxing on this beach, to wax philosophical about the mysteries of sand and sea and ever-changing sky (the beach is New England’s only “big sky”). I remember my sixth-grade teacher explaining that one could separate every grain of sand from an entire beach 1 million miles apart and still not fill one small corner of the universe. The tiny grains, the long views, the endless waves, the relentless tides – all these trigger thoughts about the great scheme of things and our place in it.

But this summer the beach also gives me a different sort of pause. That’s because two months ago I spent four days in Miami Beach for my daughter’s law-school graduation. Those four days supplied a whole different take on beach life – and the link between the beach and life.

We stayed on Lincoln Road, Miami Beach’s main pedestrian way. And what pedestrians! Mostly out-of-towners, mostly young, and mostly fresh from the fitness club back home. It’s a steady parade of minimally covered bodies posing for the dictionary photo next to “toned” or “tan.” Curves and cleavage and muscles vie with tattoos and piercings in a semi-clad display of intensely casual beach-and-club-wear.

The chief activity on Lincoln Road appears to be a subtle strutting camouflaged as strolling. A beefy beach boy angles his neck so we note his earring. A bronzed six-foot blonde holds each step a split-second so no one misses her painted toenails, ankle bracelet, and designer sandals.

The sidewalk cafes are packed, but this is not Euro-style watching-the-world-go-by. The strutters aren’t going anywhere, they’re just showing off. It is all about being seen and being stared at—whether you like it or not.

Miami Beach’s entertainment weekly makes it clear that none of this comes cheap or easy. Advertising for designer fashions actually takes second place to ads offering extreme self-makeover. Hair removal and liposuction are clearly major Miami industries, yet even they rank third and fourth as options for remaking yourself in your own image. Second place goes to cosmetic surgery promising a picture-perfect nose or derriere, and first place (judging by the intense price-competition among advertisers) goes to “breast augmentation procedures” that promised a permanently perfect profile in place of nature’s cruel shortcomings.

The then-current issue of Fitness Magazine shed helpful light on the general culture of physical perfection, which obviously extends well beyond Miami Beach and even beyond our coastlines. Cover articles touted “The New Normal” by offering to reveal the secret recipes for “Flat Belly,” “Beach Body,” and “Dream Butt.”

Ironically, the magazine’s motto – “Body, Mind, Spirit” – suggest that fitness is not merely a physical state. Certainly there is ample evidence that physical conditioning can enhance both mental and psychic well-being. Christians admittedly have often fallen prey to a dualism (“body” versus “soul”) that demeaned the importance of our own belief that salvation occurred only when “the Word became flesh.” But sometimes Catholicism struck a better balance; I remember my Jesuit mentors repeating the slogan “Mens Sanus in Corpore Sano” – “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”

So maybe there’s some merit in the body-worshipping beach life I witnessed on Lincoln Road. Still, I can’t help but wonder how many customers paying three grand for breast augmentation surgery invest similar time, effort, or money in augmenting their spiritual lives?

But there is a second reason we might think that “life is a beach.” Back in Marshfield, I see all around me the flowering of an affluent class of retirees. Thirty years ago the place abounded in simple beach cottages, sand, and sea grass. The Blizzard of ‘78 wiped out many beach-front homes, and almost all of them rebuilt bigger and better. The “Perfect Storm” of ‘91 repeated the process. Then Marshfield installed sewers, dramatically expanding the area’s sanitary limits. Properties rapidly converted from summer cottages to year-round retirement homes, adding extra rooms, extra floors, and installing elaborate landscaping with ornamental fences, flower-beds, manicured putting-green lawns, and automatic sprinkling systems. The beachfront had gone suburban.

This transformation seems to reflect the underlying view of the beach as a sort of “afterlife” on earth. People work hard to establish careers and families, lead a decent life, put the kids through school – and then retire to a year-round life-of-leisure overlooking the sea.

Thus the middle class gets to lead the life of the idle rich – but only after one’s work-life is finished. And this seaside after-life has a big advantage over the traditional after-life, because in this case, you can take it with you! That’s precisely why the beach has gone suburban: instead of leaving lawn and garden and HDTV and three bathrooms behind, you simply re-make your beach cottage into your suburban “home away from home.”

I wonder if there isn’t a third option. Maybe life really is a beach – but not because you’ve made your body perfect, and not because you brought along all the fruits of your life’s labors. Maybe it’s because life at the beach is life on the edge of the unknown. The seashore is the boundary between the world humans inhabit and a vast alien world beyond. After all, 95% of the planet’s living space is under water (remember: the land is a surface but the sea is a volume) and sea life vastly outnumbers land life. Yet we know we cannot live there; that world is not ours, even if we swim or sail or dive in it. The ocean-edge offers constant reminder that life is so much bigger than we are, that all our powers seem puny compared to twice-daily tides and Perfect Storms and Hurricane Katrinas and Christmas Tsunamis. The sea’s historic allure has always mixed breath-taking beauty with awesome power with deep mystery. But that makes beaches what Graham Greene called “the dangerous edges of things.”

When I quoted one theologian’s definition of Grace as “the undertow of The God in our lives,” my beach-loving mother-in-law balked. “Undertow is a sinister, scary image,” she said – and she was right. The very idea that our lives are constantly tugged toward an unknown world over the edge of our normal habitat, that God would pull us deep into his love and drown us in eternity unless we resist and keep ourselves safe onshore – that is a scary idea.

And that may be why, though this third idea of “life as a beach” may make the most sense, it is the least popular.

Perhaps both the millennialists in Miami Beach and the retirees in Marshfield ignore the beach’s true message because they share a common desire: to settle for a safe life reduced to simple terms and stripped of mystery. Beach as a showplace for my life’s completeness is a much more comfortable idea than Beach as a mirror of life’s limits and fragility. If life is to be a beach, most of us would much rather have it reflect the happy surface of our life than its mysterious depths.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.

Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and The University of Chicago.

His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy.

A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children. Visit his website at:

http://www.CrossCurrents.us

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