Biking for Sushi

God definetly has mysterious ways of making changes in ones life, at the least expected time!

This September morning was perfect in almost every way. It was just 7:00 a.m. as we entered the gravel walkway to the beach. The sun was muted in soothing pastels behind wisps of clouds, water almost dripping from its ascension from the sea. Every few hundred yards along the beach, dark silhouetted figures of fishermen were casting lines. Early risers walked along the beach, thankful for the secret knowledge that most visitors — intent on experiencing the neighboring town’s wild night life — never realized. That this hour of morning was the hour of bewitching.
As we walked, both my father and I were silent, both feeling the magic. Over the years Dad had sacrificed this quiet ethereality for his love of golf; I, by moving to the city. But every time I came to Sunrise Key, it was what I craved — the one thing all the life and activities available to me in Atlanta had never replaced. In the city, after work I would go to a sterile health club to walk a Stair Master or ride an exercycle. Here I would run through the waves, gauging the length of my workout by the rising or setting sun, not by a computerized timer.
Off in the distance, pelicans planed along gentle ocean swells, occasionally rising up then rocketing down beneath the surface to catch unwary fish in their expandable bills. And scattered for miles along the beach were hundreds of seagulls, fretting about, poking tiny beaks into the sand for a frenzied breakfast of coquina and sand crabs.
I’ve got bread, I silently whispered, in the right frame of mind to have something special happen. And almost instantly, it did.
The first seagull that came soaring from the distance flew with a fixity of eye that let me know he had heard. We weren’t even down the steps when, from every direction, birds were homing in on us.
“How did they know?” my father asked, both bewildered and thrilled at the flap-happy gathering.
“I told them.” I smiled, opening the tackle box and removing the bag of stale bread my mother had given me, then ducking a low-flying sweep one gull made near my head in anticipation of the goodies.
“Well, I guess I’ve got to believe you,” my father laughed, waving his arm at three birds that were hovering just two feet above his head. “I certainly know they couldn’t have smelled it from half a mile away when the bread was still in a bag in the tackle box.”
I held the first morsel aloft. A quick-reflexed seagull immediately dived and plucked it from my hand without ever touching my fingers.
“I silently said to them, I’ve got bread, and they came,” I told my father, with my eye on the next bird that came swooping in for my second offering.
“Hmm.” My father shook his head. He walked to the water, setting the catch pail down to assemble his pole.
As the birds continued their skillful dive-bomb assaults on my proffered treats, I felt good, knew that Dad felt good. He hadn’t even scoffed at what I told him about silently calling the birds.
Small as it seemed, my comfortableness with these strange miracles well described the difference between us. I lived in such a world, felt perfectly comfortable with its galaxies of subtleties — whether it had to do with balancing the fine energies of a patient’s acupuncture system, harnessing the power of the tenuous but very real mind/body connection, or plucking trinkets of artistic expression from intangible consciousness via writing.
My father preferred the world of facts and numbers. Though he, too, had a creative side, it was expressed through things you could readily touch and see — such as the graph of a stock market cycle or the hard reality of a financial statement. “I’m from St. Louis,” was his favorite expression. “Show me.”
But this particular morning held a certain spell, and even Dad was not immune to it. Calling the seagulls started it.
The first time I ever did this was by accident. I was walking to the beach on a cold winter day, a bag of bread in my hand to feed the birds. My mind was wandering, but when I got to the access way I remember looking far off in the distance at a flock of gulls scanning the cold waters for food. As soon as I thought to myself what a treat I had in store for them, it was as if my thought was projected out via microwave radio transmission. Instantly, from close to a mile away, the flock changed direction and headed straight toward me. I stood in disbelief as the birds zeroed in then encircled me, waiting impatiently for me to open my plastic bag of bread.
Since then I have duplicated this experience numerous times. It doesn’t always work — only when my thoughts are subdued, when I’m in a state of surrender, and when, in a certain sense, I’m not attached to whether or not the birds will come.
When I try too hard, say C’mon, birds, I’ve got something for you, dammit!, it invariably won’t work — which of course is always when I’m with a friend, making it into a trick, trying to show that it does indeed work. However, when I’m quiet and accepting and not in judgment of myself, the phenomenon invariably occurs.
One of my favorite lines has always been something I heard regarding Jesus: “… And he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”
This was why it is sometimes so hard to get people in our technological “show-me” society to see the wonders that lay just within reach — the tiny miracles that make this a beautiful world. Science has provided us with a life of incomparable comfort, but it has made many of us lose patience for all but the most readily available gratification and stimulation.
The type of magic I have described, however, has no instant on/off switch. The singular passport to this kingdom of subtlety is acceptance and patient expectation. Acceptance that this may not be the right moment, and the patience to wait until it is.
And this day, this perfect weather, and the coincidences that would yet manifest on the beach as if orchestrated just for my father’s benefit, were now my reward for this patience.