Rehoboth Bay

There is a spit of land in Delaware that is two blocks wide. In the morning, you can roll eastward out of bed and catch the day’s sunrise over the placid Atlantic. In the evening, you can stroll westward to the eastern banks of the Rehoboth Bay and catch the sunset over the distant trees.

I have been coming to this place for 25 years and never really knew that before. Evidently, many other people don’t know it either. With literally tens of thousands of people vacationing here, my family and I were one of only three groups who gathered on a public pier to watch the evening show at pocket-sized Monigle Park,

Compared to the beaches on the ocean side of the spit, this park is small, roughly the size of a modern Great Room. It is bounded by rocks that serve as breakers, dune grass to hold the sand in place and a handful of beach houses of modest and grand proportions.

While the surf at the ocean lunges and sweeps, this water at the bay gently laps its shore. Today is a most glorious day at the park. Nine in the morning, and no one to be seen. Just the distant voices of families at ease. Cool, dry air and a cloudless sky. Seagulls gracing the wind. About as close to peace as you can get in a robust resort area like Rehoboth.

If I had the leisure, and the talent, I would create a Year of Sunrises and Sunsets. Imagine what it would be like to capture the daily show of the beauty and power that brings all things to life on earth. Through rain and storm and clarity and haze, to catch the changing moods of our planet in the face of the sun, across the reach of a year.

What astonishes me is that this show happens every day, and truth be told, most days I don’t even notice. Of course, I can tell if it is light or dark outside, whether I need to turn on the lights or draw down the shades. I pay attention to the progression of weekly sunsets that tell me when Shabbat is to begin. But noting the mundane majesty of this solar perambulation? I only wish. Witnessing the brightening of the sky each morning does not cause me to gasp at the sheer splendor and blessing of this most life affirming act. Although it should. Even with the nudge of the daily blessings I most often fail in this constant call of awareness. It often takes illness, or loss, or more kindly the unbroken vastness of a maritime horizon to remind me of the awe and necessity of nature. How much we depend on it and how much we still do not know.

A few years ago, a man full of hubris declared the end of scientific inquiry. He argued that we had essentially conquered all the major frontiers and the rest is just tinkering. The truth is, we still don’t know what gravity is and what makes it work. We don’t know what fired the Big Bang, where all that energy came from or exactly where it is going. We don’t know what determines consciousness or conscience. One day, I hope we do. How awesome it would be to know these things.

For now, everyday, we whirl and twirl around our life source on our corner of the Milky Way in our neck of the Universe. It is good, now and then, to remember this, look up, and have it, for a moment, take our breath away.