Earlier this week, Alice and I had one of those funny conversations where you suddenly realize that different people take different things for granted. It was early in the morning. I was finishing off a cup of coffee. She was making a cup of tea. Murray was still asleep. And I said something like, “I think I’m going to go for a run. I was going to take the day off, but it’s pretty nice out, and it’s low tide, so I might as well.”
She looked at me like I had grown a second head. “You know what the tide is?” she asked.
Well, I’d never really thought about it before, but sure. I run pretty much every day along the water—usually up Bunker Hill Street past the Harvard-Kent to the Navy Yard, then back up along the Mystic to Schrafft’s, and home. Or sometimes the other way: to Schrafft’s, then along the boardwalk for a while and over toward the High School. In any case, the water is the point. I love the ocean, and the glorious smell of the river or the harbor lifts my spirits. You get it all throughout the neighborhood when the weather is warm, and especially when it’s a little humid. And you get it most strongly along the water at low tide, when the seaweed and the muck are uncovered.
So of course, as I run along the water, I notice the tide. And it shifts by an hour or so each day, so that for a few days at a time, it’s low when I’m running, then higher, then high, then lower, then low, then higher, then high…
I may be unusual for knowing about the tide, but we all inhabit these cycles in time. Perhaps you rhapsodize, like some of my family do, over the waxing and waning of the moon, continually amazed by how full and how bright it can get. Perhaps you’ve been delighting in this spring’s bright green leaves and blooming flowers, or bemoaning how high the pollen count has been. Perhaps you’ve rolled your eyes at the parking notices that have appeared on lamp-posts and windshields throughout the neighborhood this week, like little migratory flyers coming home to Boston for Construction Season. And if you’re a really astute worshiper, you may have noticed that our readings on Sunday mornings repeat themselves every three years; if it feels like you’ve heard them before, it’s probably because you have.
Sometimes it can feel like we’re trapped in these cycles, returning to the same patterns over and over, for better or for worse. (Are they really tearing up Main Street again?) But as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “No one steps in the same river twice.” Everything changes and flows continuously. When you return to the same river, it’s no longer the same river, but new water from upstream. And you’re no longer the same person, either.
And these cycles of life—whether they’re as short as the tides or as long as our lectionary—offer a continual invitation to reflect. Do I remember the last time the tide was so low, or the moon was so full? Do I remember when the flowers started to bloom last year, or when my eyes started to itch? Where was I when last construction season began? (And where on earth did I manage to park my car?)
These moments provide a chance to look back, and to see that the cycles shape our life, not so much into a circle as a spiral. We spin around and around, following the same cycles over and over, but we’re also constantly moving and changing. We arrive at this moment in spring and find that our children are a year taller, or our joints are a year creakier, or our losses or pain are another year in the past; that new things have happened, for better or for worse, and that we are not the same people we were the last time around.
Maybe all this motion is random. Or maybe there’s some sense to it all. Maybe God is drawing you slowly in one direction or another. (Or maybe you’re running away.) But pay attention to the tide—whatever that may be for you. Pay attention to the cycles of your life, as they ebb and flow, and as you continue to change. Because it’s true: We never do step into the same river twice.