What started as a fun outing soon became a weekly tradition. Every Sunday morning, my parents and I would go to the beach. We never missed a week. There, we sang children’s songs about the Sea and listened to exciting stories about people who had experienced adventures at Sea. If there was time left, we would even build sandcastles! It was on that beach that I developed a deep love for the Sea: its beauty, its colours, its power, and its life.

I carried this love with me into my teenage years. We passionately sang songs about the Sea, listened to powerful sermons, and prayed together for a tsunami that would flood the entire beach and coastline. When that tsunami didn’t come, everything simply continued as usual. Soon, I received my first task: helping to set up beach chairs for Sunday morning. Not long after, I was allowed to look after the children, tell them stories, and teach them how to build sandcastles.

At twenty, I got my first real job on the beach, first as a member of the lifeguard team and later as the leader of the promotion team. To promote the Sea, we built beach bars in the city centre, filled with sand.

Now I’m 52. My entire working life, every Sunday morning, and many evenings during the week have been spent on the beach. I have sung more than ten thousand songs about the Sea, heard thousands of sermons – boring, challenging, moving, cringe-worthy monologues about the Sea, the power of the waves, the smell of the water, what you should and shouldn’t do on the beach, how far you can go into the Sea, how beautiful the Sea is, and what it means to swim. There’s no aspect of the Sea or the beach about which I haven’t heard a sermon in all those years.

Looking back, I now realise that I’ve spent most of my time working with my back to the Sea. Not because my love for the Sea diminished, but because the people and the work on the beach demanded so much of my attention. Of course, there were also moments when we went swimming and surfing. But shall I confess something? I’ve swum a lot in the Sea, but in my entire life, I’ve never gone further than two hundred metres from the shore!

Lately, I’ve started to feel restless. When I go for walks, I find myself more often on the high dune above the beach. This has become my place of rest, away from the hustle and bustle of the beach. In silence, I gaze out over the Sea. I hear her calling. She’s been calling for years, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist that call: “Come, let go of the beach, lose yourself in me.”

I know what the Sea wants. For me to take my canoe, leave the shore behind forever, and lose myself in her vastness. To marvel at her beauty, to curse her fickleness when she knocks me over with an unexpected wave. Amidst my frustration, she smiles at me, for she knows my deep love for her. The further I venture into her depth, breadth, and height, the greater my love and wonder for her becomes.

That’s how I imagine it, from my safe dune. But fear holds me back. The fear of the swell, of letting go of the beach, of seasickness, loneliness, and silence. Will I meet fellow canoeists? I hope so. But at the same time, I’m not keen on venturing out to sea in a group. This is a journey I must make alone. A solitary canoe trip, finding enough in an encounter with the Sea. If I meet a fellow canoeist, I look forward to sharing tips and experiences before we part ways and continue our personal journeys.

My canoe is almost ready. I hesitate, I waver. The fear of the great unknown grips me. At the same time, I know there is no other path for me. I cannot stay on the beach.

I’m done singing songs about the Sea without truly feeling a sense of wonder. I’m done listening and can no longer endure another sermon from my fellow beach experts. I’m finished with all my tasks on the beach. I no longer want to spend most of my time with my back to the Sea. Above all, I’m done with that sand. All that wretched sand…

I hear the Sea calling me: “Come, lose yourself in Me. Let go of all those childish images of Me. Let go of everything you think you know about Me. Discover who I really am.”

On the beach, the men of the handbook are calling: wise, learned men who have meticulously studied the handbook. “This is what the Sea is like… Stay here… Come to the beach every week… Yes, the sand is annoying, but you have to make some sacrifices for the togetherness here on the beach… Come, let’s sing about the Sea and talk about her. There are still so many songs… There are still so many speeches…”

The experts of the handbook also have a great love for the Sea. Sometimes I wonder how much of their knowledge is theoretical? Is it because they’re such good scholars? And how much of that knowledge is lived, because alongside their preaching, they’re also accomplished seafarers, deep-sea divers, or long-distance swimmers?

“Come and listen again… Sing along… Stay here… From the beach, we can experience the Sea at her most beautiful and deepest…”

I feel a deep resistance within me to these words. I can no longer endure a monologue from the handbook. But if suddenly a seafarer appeared with his weathered, brown face because he spent a year at Sea, I would hang on his every word, sit at his feet.

Am I expecting too much? Am I wanting too much? Enoch didn’t have a handbook, but he swam in the Sea and disappeared beyond the horizon. Abraham didn’t have a handbook either, but his experience with the Sea was intense. Melchizedek was independent of any handbook, but he knew and experienced the Sea to the depths of his being.

So I stood on that high dune. Until one day, I decided that my answer would be “yes.” I decided that I no longer wanted to know the Sea from the beach, from the stories and sermons of the handbook. My canoe was ready. Quietly, I said goodbye – goodbye to my friends on the beach, goodbye to the songs, to the stories, to the pointing fingers… Goodbye to the sand… Oh, that wretched sand.

Full of courage. Just me and the Sea. Soon, the beach was out of sight. Where to now? The direction no longer mattered. That took some getting used to. It was about being, about drifting, about the water on my face, about the waves pushing me forward and sometimes holding me back. Drifting on that great Ocean.

Until… one day, the Sea and all her water suddenly disappeared. Completely gone, from one moment to the next. Just a moment ago, She was there… Now, nothing at all…

I fall… Around me, there is only emptiness. Panic grips me by the throat. I want to swim up. I want to see and feel the Sea again, but there is no “up” anymore. There is only emptiness, a terrible emptiness.

With the emptiness comes a deep sense of loss…

I fall into that loss…

Deeper and deeper until I realise that I’m no longer falling.

I am…

This is it…

A deep emptiness where I learn to stand.

Was this the Sea’s call to fall into her emptiness? And to realise that you can be there, stand there, flourish there?

This was never taught to me on the beach. There, it was always said that the Sea is only full – full of power, full of goodness, full of love, full of grace… Full, fuller, fullest… Why did no one ever speak of her emptiness?

If everything around and within us, at an atomic level, consists of 99.9% emptiness, wouldn’t the Sea also be empty at the depths of her being?

Or is this something you have to experience, something you can’t get from the theoretical knowledge of the handbook?

What if emptiness isn’t bad, doesn’t mean absence, but actually means space?

On the beach, I was taught from a young age that I had to give my heart to the Sea. Only then would you belong… Only then would you be a Sea-child.

I was taught that I had to bow. I had to become smaller and smaller so that the Sea would become greater and greater within me.

As a teenager, I made a covenant with the Sea that I would live one hundred per cent for the Sea.

Now I lie here in the emptiness. Curled up, on my knees. My learned posture, both inside and out.

In the emptiness, I find space.

Space to stand.

Space to reclaim my heart.

Space to become autonomous for the first time in my life.

Space to break free from all the “musts.”

Space to realise that I am completely free in all my choices, but that my desire to do good hasn’t changed.

Nothing changes at all, while at the same time, everything has changed…

And the Sea whispers joyfully: “At last! It’s about time…”

– Matthijs Vlaardingerbroek