Northern Oregon coast
Gleaning the coast
A week along the inlet listening for what I had stopped hearing at home.
I went up to the coast on a Saturday in February. The forecast called for rain all week. I went anyway because I had been told to, and because I had been making excuses for three months not to.
The inlet is small. Sixty houses, maybe. A hardware store that closes at four. A church on the highway with a sign reading WHOEVER YOU ARE in faded paint. I did not go to the church. I went to the inlet because the man who told me to go up had said to walk along the rocks at low tide and listen.
What I heard, mostly, was wind.
But on the third morning a fisherman in a sand-colored boat raised a hand to me from the water. I raised mine back. Two days later we sat in his kitchen drinking instant coffee while his wife asked me, without preamble, what I was running from.
I am still working on the answer.
What I want to set down before I lose it
I will not write everything here. Some of it is theirs, not mine. But a few things I want to keep:
That the field of Boaz was not empty when Ruth walked through it. There were people working in it, and someone gave the order: leave the corners. Make space.
That every place I have ever gone looking for God, He was already in conversation with someone I had not noticed.
That if you go to a small town hoping to be the one with something to give, you will leave embarrassed.
That a man in a sand-colored boat raised his hand to me on a Tuesday morning, and that gesture has not left me.
If you prayed for this trip, and I know some of you did because you wrote to tell me, thank you. They asked to be remembered. There is more to say about all of this and not enough words yet to say it. I will try again next month.