Knocking on heaven’s gate

Everything is grace, if we’re willing to see it with the eyes of wonder.

(Courtesy photo of CINDY SCHULTZ)

As my feet dug into the soft sand of the Jersey Shore just before sunrise one day earlier this month, I briefly flashed back to my pre-teen years of doing the same on the rockier beaches of Noyack Bay in the Hamptons with my maternal grandmother. Every family vacation included both of my grandmothers back then, whether we were battling traffic on the Sunrise Highway or, in later years, the Garden State Parkway. At the time, the presence of my grandmothers — on vacation but also at our home throughout every week — seemed “normal,” nothing to marvel at. But now I realize what a gift it was to have them with us regularly and especially on vacation, passing on their favorite beach pastimes.

For my Nani, the maternal grandmother mentioned above, it was sunrise walks and floating on her back in the bay while looking up at the sky. For my E-ma, my paternal grandmother, it was helping us find fiddler crabs and riding the waves with us before she went out past the breakers to swim solo, as she must have done so many times in her youth when she lived in Brooklyn and worked at Coney Island.

Many years our vacation crew swelled to include my Aunt Margaret and her family and even a couple of times my high school boyfriend’s family as well. We didn’t order fancy iced coffees on the beach or go to expensive water parks. Instead, we entered hotel-sponsored, sand-sculpting competitions and packed bologna sandwiches in leftover Wonder Bread bags, eating them under a faded green umbrella with white fringe. It was simple and sweet and, in retrospect, an incredible blessing, one that I’d missed as it was happening.

What does all of this have to do with the spiritual life? Well, as I like to say, everything is spiritual: the family relationships and memories that shape us, the sunrises that spark gasps of awe, the crash and tumble of water moved by the pull of the moon, even the people on the beach blanket next to you listening to their music too loud. All of it is a reminder that we are part of God’s glorious creation, everything interconnected.

It’s impossible not to feel the hand of the Creator when we stand before the magnificence of a roaring ocean or the rising sun. The challenge, however, is learning to find the divine in the less-spectacular-but-still-miraculous moments of our mundane days. The bite of sweet corn from a local farm stand, the beloved dog who welcomes you home every time as if it’s the first time, the traffic snarl that causes you to slow to a crawl and maybe spot something you’d otherwise miss. Everything is grace, if we’re willing to see it with the eyes of wonder.

When we are able to see clearly our interconnection to other people and all of creation, we cannot help but be kinder, softer, more generous and less divisive. Whether it’s the connection to beloved family members and pets or to the stunning natural beauty of the world around us, this “interbeing,” as the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh labeled it, reminds us that we are all part of the great whole. 

Thomas Merton wrote about the “point of nothingness” that exists like a diamond at our core and belongs solely to God. “It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely … I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”

Without realizing it, my grandmothers gave me early lessons in how to spot that gate in the world around me. Where is the gate of heaven beckoning to you today? Look around for the signs, and let yourself be carried by the wave of wonder to the heaven that exists right here.

Mary DeTurris Poust is leading the annual Stillpoint Retreat at Pyramid Life Center on Sept. 11-13. Information: notstrictlyspiritual.com/events.