Chaos and Birth

At the coast, sitting on a boulder along the beach I was watching the waves crash into the rocks and roll ashore across the sand, each wave pounding and foaming, rolling forth and retreating. I felt the salty mist spray my face and the sunny wind dry it away. I took in the great explosions of energy and re-energizing ions where these two great bodies—earth and sea—meet and felt calmed by them.

And then I noticed that while the sun glistened through the lovely translucent green, white-capped peaks of the waves, at the base they were dark and murky with churning sand and seaweed, bits of shell and who knows what else. I thought "chaos." Here I am at the conjunction of the vast Pacific Ocean and the North American continent, and it is chaos. Beautiful chaos. Great explosions of sound and energy and churning and turning, water rolling and retreating in constant motion. And it is murky and chaotic. It isn’t clear or orderly or well-defined where the land ends and the sea begins.

Doesn't chaos always give birth to something? Isn't chaos a medium of creation? Whether it is life itself, life-affirming, or life threatening, something is always birthed from chaos. Think of human birth. Now that’s a chaotic experience! The body seems completely beyond one’s control. Stars and planets are birthed from chaos. And from the chaos of a collapsing or overthrown government arises a new government. From any failure arises new ideas, attitudes, or efforts. Out of floods, fires, and hurricanes arise new structures and a new sense of connection and helping one another. Art arises from chaos; it doesn’t come into being in a neat, orderly fashion, does it?

And here at the shoreline, the buried, bubbling clams feed on the chaos. And where there are pockets of calm, tide pools and puddles cradle new life. So this chaos thing, the murky times with which we are so uncomfortable, just what might they give birth to? Granted, no one wants to live in a constant state of chaos, but if we are always running from it, will we ever allow ourselves the chance to find out what wants to be birthed?