As we prepare to leave North Wildwood

by Mary | Jul 19, 2008 | Uncategorized

Here’s our trio in front of the fountain in Cape May. What is it about fountains that makes everyone pull out their spare change and start throwing it?

The moon rising over the Atlantic was really much more beautiful than anything my rather cheap digital camera could reproduce, but here it is anyway. The orange tint to the moon, the reflection on the water, the dunes with gently blowing grasses, even a perfectly placed planet just to the right of the moon, which you probably can’t see. Just a perfect scene.

Last chance souvenirs

by Mary | Jul 18, 2008 | Uncategorized

We went down to “Exit 0,” as they say in these parts, to visit Cape May and Sunset Beach for our final day of vacation. Cape May is one of those cute little villages with lots of restaurants and over-priced shops. However, between there and Sunset Beach, the kids were able to come up with the perfect souvenirs that had been evading them all week on the Wildwood boardwalk.

Olivia found a little stuffed hermit crab, which came in second only to the live hermit crab she has been begging for all week but that we vetoed out of hand because we know we’ll end up cleaning out the cage and trying to keep Greta the dog from eating the little critter. (She has since declared that she will never eat crab again. I think she’s down to crackers and American cheese at this point.) All week she had $20 of her own money burning a hole in her pocket, but she held out and found what she wanted, with enough left over to buy a dolphin visor and still have some change in her new wallet.

Chiara fell in loved with a cheap plastic cat. The thing is pretty darn tacky, but it was only $3.99, and she has been carrying it around and talking to it as if it came right from the Humane Society. Too cute.

Noah settled for a small car, a black bear, and a pirate sign for his bedroom door that warns the rest of us to stay away. I’m thinking of getting one of those to hang from my forehead.

Even mommy and daddy did not go away empty handed. The Sunset Beach gift shop has great T-shirts and sweatshirts really cheap. We’re talking $10 for a hoodie with Cape May across the front. Really nice. Remember that if you head this way.

So now we’re doing laundry and starting to pack up our roof rack for the big trip home tomorrow. We’ll spend one more evening here, eating Rick’s Seafood, walking on the beach, flying kites and taking in the beauty of the ocean before going back to our real life. I’m trying not to think about work, even though I can feel it trying to push its way into my sunny beach thoughts.

Sand, surf and the “true self”

by Mary | Jul 17, 2008 | Uncategorized

The Jersey Shore may seem to be an unlikely place to read a spiritual book about unmasking your “true self,” but that is exactly what I’ve been doing while I sit in my sand chair watching Chiara make “soup” in the 24-inch wading pool that we drag with us to the beach each day. (Can you believe we actually bring a pool to the beach? Yes, we’re insane.)

I just finished “Becoming Who You Are,” by James Martin, S.J., one of my all-time favorite writers. I first discovered him when a friend gave me “My Life With the Saints” a couple of Christmases ago. I followed that up with Father Martin’s book on devotions. But “Becoming Who You Are” combines some of my most favorite spiritual thinkers in one slim volume: Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Mother Teresa, and, last but certainly not least, Jesus. Here is the random paragraph that caught my eye before I started officially reading this book. It was all I needed to see to know that this book was for me:

“Much of this journey involved my letting go of the need to be somebody else. Nobody in particular, mind you, just a feeling that I needed to be different. Early in the novitiate, I thought that being holy meant changing an essential part of who I was, suppressing my personality, not building on it. I was eradicating my natural desires and inclinations, rather than asking God to sanctify and even perfect them. Here’s the way I thought about it: I knew that I certainly wasn’t a holy person, so therefore being holy must mean being a different person.” (p. 29)

Wow, how long have I thought pretty much the exact same thing? For most of my life, or at least my adult life, I have figured that the only way to become a better person was to become a different person. Now, the odd thing about that is that if you asked me who I would want to be if I could be anyone else, I would tell you — as I have told other people when asked this very question — that I would not want to be anyone but me, doing the job I’m doing. So it’s not that I want to be someone specific; I just want to be someone different from the me I am right now. This book, however, looks at the possibility, the reality, that becoming a “better” person is not about changing who we are but about becoming who we already are down in our hearts and souls, the selves that God created us to be.

Martin quotes Merton from “Seeds of Contemplation” saying: “For me to be a saint means to be myself.” The key is to figure out who we are, dropping the masks we put on for the benefit of other people, or maybe for the benefit of our own egos.

The beach is actually the perfect place to do that kind of thinking, although typically it would probably be best to do serious soul searching sans the sand toys and boogie boards and constant quest for hermit crabs. Still, when all else fails, it can work despite the most ridiculous distractions: Think 3-year-old needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of the incredibly wide Wildwood beach with nary a bathroom or pull-up in site. Think arguing with Olivia that she must release the eight hermit crabs in her bucket before they all boil in their own ocean water right before our eyes (She finally returned them to the sea, saying in true Jesus fashion, I love every one of them just the same. OK, maybe Jesus didn’t say it just like that, but you know what I mean.)

I am closing in on 46 years old and I will readily admit that I still do not know my “true self,” although I do think I’m coming much closer as I get older. The scales are tipping away from what I think I should be toward what I know I am. If you’ve ever felt that way, even for a minute, pick up Father Martin’s book by clicking HERE and read it, and then read it again.