When life calls for recentering, I’m in for a real treat. I close my eyes and transcend to Cannon Beach, Oregon, one of the most beautiful places on planet earth.
Journey with me.
Feel the warm sand, the cool breeze. Smell the sea salt and the kelp. Listen to the waves gently roll in and the seagulls cry. See the vastness of the ocean, the grandeur of Haystack Rock. Sense the presence of a Creator God, so majestic and powerful. Relax and recenter.
The impressions places of natural beauty leave on us are profound. Yet the beauty we embrace often has come at a hefty price.
Many millennia ago what is now the Oregon Coast was building up and out, one sediment layer upon another. Over time, this built to a level much higher than the beaches of today.
Next the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates violently collided as the oceanic crust pushed under the continental crust. This pushed molten lava up as part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Forty three volcanoes in Oregon including names of today like Hood, Jefferson, the Three Sisters, and Crater Lake sent lava flows across the region. The expanse of these flows reached all the way to the coast where lava seeped into the sediment levels, creating molded structures underground.
Nature was not done. Violent ocean storms slammed against the coastline. Earthquakes lowered coastal landscapes. Rain drizzled down. Mudslides devastated hillsides as they fell into the sea. Wind swept out sentiment and brought in sand. Fires raced through foliage, removing its protection of the soil. Year after year. Century after century. Millennium after Millennium. Animals died. Early Americans fled to safer ground. As erosion of sediment progressed over time, only rocks of lava like Haystack Rock remained, still to be refined by wind and wave.
And yet, the first impression of those who see Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock today is one of amazement of the handiwork of God’s Creation. It’s mine, each time. But to feel that way with integrity, we must reconcile with what happened across time and how God fits into that, and that is hard.
Thus, we default to anchoring our perceptions to our miniscule moment in history. We avoid facing the burden of knowledge as if that somehow protects “Creator Majesty” from encompassing the violent pathway to this awe inspiring beauty. We simply don’t have space or capacity for this conundrum and leave key questions unresolved.
Yet oddly in this avoidance we still find parallels to the aspects of God we can explain – the God of pasts forgotten, present purified, and of the comforting knowledge that what shapes us can make us beautiful.
Feel the warm sun and sand.
Hear the waves and gulls.
Experience the nowness of God.