Magic, Fear, and the Power of Rob Bell

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Drift I, made with feet dug into warm Nooschkum sands

On naming

“But I’m scared,” said mouse.

“And that, Dear One,” explained fox, “is the first step.”

Thoughts while making...

“Of course, you were scared,” he said.

The idea had never occurred to me. In my story, I was scared because something was wrong *with* me, lacking *in* me.

Yet along comes this stranger, walking up the beach, his long gray hair blowing in the morning wind, sunshine sparking his eyes. And he changes everything.

Our family has a storied retreat along the shores of Miller Bay in WA; my great-great grandfather building 5 houses for his 5 daughters, the stuff of novel + legend.

Since 1905, our families have watched the tides come and go here, apples ripen and rot on a 100+ year old trees, and loved ones awaken and depart as herons and eagles, seals and starfish keep guard against the flow of time.

For all the magic of the place, fear often lurked in the shadows for me as a kid; in the dark, forested edges, the cold watery depths, and most of all because of the humans.

At any given time, everybody on the place are cousins, descendants of those first sisters. For me, however, each was an unknown, impossible and anxious challenges to navigate as I tried to remain unseen and unheard.

“Of course, you were scared,” the gray-haired stranger repeated. “Who wouldn’t be?”

Standing there in the morning light, he (actually an older cousin I’d barely remembered from my childhood) proceeds to tell me of his own fears as a child in this very same place; of the things that scared him and his siblings – a world of dark things of which I never imagined, yet equally scary.

And we laugh and we talk about how our stories overlap, yet don’t; about how individual collective memory can be; and how opening safe spaces to share, for young and old, can (and does) change everything.

What a gift. What a gift (thanks to @realrobbell for this sweet lens).

What was one “thing” you were scared of as a child that you can gently re-member and re-story today?