Solid Rock Amidst Sinking Sand
Following Christ, a step at a time
Back when I converted, I wondered, “Now what?” I had chosen to follow Christ, and I wasn’t turning back. I had no idea where following might lead, and what the impact would be on my life.
I took it a step at a time. First step: tell my husband and daughters. Second: get in touch with my dad’s friend and pastor, Brian Morgan. When I spoke with my mom, she suggested I read the gospels, and I did: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Having grown up Catholic, and studied the Bible in a little depth in high school, and continued to meet up with the gospels through the years, I knew the stories, and the backdrop of history. But returning to the gospels with fresh eyes and heart, I was meeting Jesus anew.
As this was during the pandemic and a time when I had woken up to some harsh realities, I glimpsed how the landscape, politics, and cruelties of Jesus’ time had never ceased, and were alive and well, dressed in 21st century garb. For me, Jesus and everything he said and did was not only hugely relevant, but happening in present tense, maybe even right on our Island.
That sense of immediacy meant that I could drop everything I thought I’d known about faith, and instead cling like a barnacle to that rock of Christ, and discover who and what that life-giving rock is. I’d had decades of shaping my own spirituality, making up my own religion like sand castles, first one way, then another. Lovely though some of those expressions had been, they ultimately could not withstand the tide. I now wiped that sand off my hands.
And when well-meaning friends, hearing me speak of my conversion, sought to give me books that expressed ideas about Christ that are outside the canonical, I declined. I had long heard that the Bible tells an amazing story, and - with another step forward, another realization made - that’s what I devoted myself to discover. After my decades of spiritual wandering, the notion of dipping into those other books felt like derailment.
Back in April, I read a commentary that quoted words from a hymn I've still never heard, called "Solid Rock."
On Christ the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand.
In my bible study (led by my dad’s “rabbi,” now mine) we were exploring some of Isaiah. I reflected on words from Isaiah 43 that include:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you
The following poem was inspired by both.
*Note: Nori - if you are unfamiliar with the word - is seaweed that is harvested, dried, and eaten. I’ve harvested nori fresh from the sea and eaten it raw, and it is so delicious and deeply nourishing. Nori is used in Japanese cuisine, such as for wrapping sushi rolls.
Word
By Jane Valencia
In the sliding sands
you
you
pounding waves
you
bruising torrents
ack!
{splash}
How easy to mis-step
and lose oneself
in the churnings
and the dashings
and the howling winds
and the vocal decimations
of nay-sayers and those who inflame
and seek to manipulate
and have us believe that we are
divided helpless stupid and
worth less
than a strand
of seaweed
whose only use in the
demon-driven mind of the world
is as a brief addition to
someone's dinner plate
But -
the rock
is right here
underfoot and undersoul
never missing when
we dare to quiet
There,
Your reminding word
Hear,
Your call -
our
name
Then we know ourselves again
and like the living, waving nori
near the shore
or the canopied forests of bull kelp
in the blessed, powerful sea
we hold fast,
storied and mineral-rich,
capturing the sun
in you
you
you
You
Amen.
