My church friend Ana and I flew to Florida last week for the Symbolic World Summit in Tarpon Springs, and returned on Sunday. I am still processing all the quite stimulating and encouraging lectures and discussions we heard; Ana and I also enjoyed the extended time together over five days to talk about our loves and lives, including many books and ideas. We attended services at St. Nicholas Greek Cathedral in town after the event.
In the paragraph above I notice that I effortlessly included six noun or adjective conjunctions; does that habit flow from my general tendency to the “Yes, And” point of view, I wonder? I hope you don’t mind, because I’m not in the mood for polishing up my writing skills right now. It could be that the Summit increased my leanings toward expansiveness… but it’s an effort I am always making to keep the conjoined words to only two.
Orthodox Lent is almost here! And there is plenty for me to focus on, of the sort of things that help us on our Journey to Pascha. A few of the speakers at the conference gave us their unique short list of “action points,” for going forward in our personal lives on the theme of the event. That theme was Reclaiming the Cosmic Image, which right there seems a very Lenten goal. Maybe I will share about it in future posts.
For now, I just wanted to document the Florida sands. I had never been in that part of the country before, or anywhere on the Gulf of Mexico. When we first walked from our car to the beach, the bright whiteness struck me first. And then, to walk barefoot on that soft, soft sand, everywhere full of broken pieces of shells, was such a different experience from California’s North Coast, which is my normal experience. We rarely see any but mussel shells on our beaches, but there in Florida intact shells were also in great abundance, and in places laid out in wide swaths. Of course, the air was balmy, but not hot.
We visited Sunset Beach on Friday (at sunset), and Honeymoon Island on our way to the airport Sunday. Both outings were fairly brief, because most of our weekend was at the conference venue.
We collected a few shells, and my purse collected a lot of the fine, glittery sand. I even carried a big handful back to the car, where Ana found a ziplock bag for me to put it in. I have been neglecting my sand collection in the last couple of years, but now I will get it going again, and will have added one little bottle of white sand to show that I truly was once upon a time in Florida.
Gladsome Lights 
I used to collect sand – my small collection got lost during one of our many moves before we finally settled. This sounds like a good getaway for you both.
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Sounds like you had a very enjoyable time in Florida.
Beautiful sunset photo.
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Lovely.
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I am jealous of your trip. I seriously wanted to go to that conference but decided it was out of my budget at this time. If I would have known you were going, that may have been the push I needed. It would have been great fun to meet you.
One of my fellow seminarians was from the Georgia coast and he used to say that sand was our history, and in it the life of the ocean is remembered. He would (tongue in cheek) regularly disagree with Jesus’ parable about building our house upon the sand. He argued that this is precisely what we were doing when we studied the scattered and broken shells in the theology books of theological giants of the past.
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Oh, that would have been fun! I was a little shy about mentioning my plans beforehand, and while the conference was going on I did often wonder if around me were a few lesser famous people I am acquainted with but wouldn’t recognize.
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And thank you for sharing the thoughts about sand – Sand is as fascinating as the ocean, and your friend’s analogy will give me something to think about as I curate my collection.
My friend suggested that the sand we walked in was so white and soft exactly because it was composed primarily of those shells, instead of the rocks that are are the case on our beaches at home.
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This looks like both a beautiful and enriching getaway and you certainly made good use of your time. That sunset photo is splendid, as is the church interior and all that fabulous blue sky! Welcome home.
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Well, now I am jealous… You must tell me all about it asap!
Dana
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I lived in Sarasota on Florida’s Gulf Coast while I was in high school and college half a century ago. The weather was warm and you could set your watch as the rain started to fall at three o’clock in the afternoon. The beach down the driveway was wide and deep with the white sand that you saw on your trip.
Let’s hear it for the regular usage of conjunctions, essential connectors that nearly disappeared from our language in the 1980s.
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What an evocative memory you have shared, making use of a few conjunctions yourself 🙂 and I appreciate the affirmation about essential connections. Glory to God for the gifts of language, and the way you and I have just established one more connection by means of it just now.
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