A Child, A Shovel & the Deep

There's a little boy at the beach. He's sprawled out on knees and elbows with a plastic shovel in one hand and a little red bucket floating out to sea behind him. The ocean shouts a warning, whispers his name, but he doesn't listen. The sun looks down from on high, burns his shoulders, throws a dark shadow out in front of him, but he's busy.

Digging in the sand. Digging down. Digging deep.

To where the water comes seeping in and slipping through all the spaces in-between:
Unnumbered grains of sand
The surf and the shore
His tiny fingers

On the rim of this excavation, the boy begins to fashion for himself a world. A kingdom of towers and arches and walls cleverly buttressed with driftwood and shells and glass from the sea. But, with no real citizens. Silent streets. Empty city squares. All flooded. Unmade and dissolved even as they are built.

Any moment now. One day soon. The tide will come in - so far and so fast - catching the little boy by surprise. Perhaps a small breaker or two will try to get his attention. Maybe it will be a wave of some height and significance, cresting well over his head. However it happens, he will turn and see and hear and taste and know all-at-once the great difference and the great oneness of the water in his little dugout basin and the fathomless depth of sea and sky.

And, then the story will begin.

I think the one may be us.
I think the second may be our religion.
And, I think that the third just might be God.