Life Down Here On Earth

Every morning when I run the beach I can't help but notice the difference from the day before. Especially if I'd been on the beach the day before or have taken a beach walk like I did last evening.

In the daytime people have left trash and cigarette butts and other stains on the shore. All kinds of things wash ashore from condoms to beer cans to pieces of boats. God's beauty is stained.

But as I run the water mark, I see where the ocean has cleansed the beach, swallowing these things into her belly. And what was once dirty is not clean. The sins have been washed away, as an old hymn goes.

There are times when I wish that life was like this. As i've gone through mine, I've pick up stains by doing things that hurt myself or hurt others. And try as I may to hide them or sweep them under a rug, at some point they usually come out. These things then become part of who we are as individuals. We may only do something once but it remains a part of who we are.

Halos fall to one side. Angels fall and when they get back up they are dirty never as pure as they were.

Yet this is what living life is, I think. We go through with the purest of intentions but we do selfish things or stupid things or hurtful things. Almost always we immediately regret them, but they have been done. They are now part of our history and they alter us. I see it every day at work as people fall into poverty, addiction, and homelessness as decisions become patterns in one's life. I am certainly an altered boy, to quote Jimmy Buffett, and can never be quite what I was before I made some of my choices.

There is a song I love by Nashville songwriter Kevin Welch called "Life Down Here on Earth." Singing about life with our carnival of friends and highlighting our flaws, he gets to the line:

I killed a lot of time
that was my biggest sin
but I forgave myself
and I'm alive again!

The point being that we are flawed people and that overcoming crooked halos or dirty white robes begins with forgiving ourselves and jumping right back into living life!

So while I am sorry for some of the things that I've done, especially those things that hurt others, I have forgiven myself and I'm alive again. And I'm going to do my very best to not repeat myself as I live my life down here on earth.