I have an elderly friend named Mary.

Mary spent a few years of her adult life living by the Atlantic Ocean, and never got over it.
A prayerful woman, she found the sea to be her favorite place of encounter with God. When, stuck here in the Midwest, she would speak longingly of her religious experience of the sea.
I would ask her why Lake Michigan, just a few miles from her home, wouldn't do as well.
I would remind her that, after all, you can't see across either of them. She simply dismissed me: "It's not the same."

And it isn't. I grew up just a couple miles from Lake Michigan, but there was never anything haunting or mystical about it. It was just a fun place to go fishing, swimming, picnicking, and to watch beautiful sunsets. I did not expect the ocean to be anything different.
But when I did experience the ocean - in my mid-thirties - it quickly became for me the most vivid image of God.

My first teachers about the sea were the little sandpipers. These are tiny birds, found on almost all the world's beaches, drawing their sustenance from the sea. Often in large flocks, they scamper along the very edge of the surf. As each wave falls upon the sand, they retreat up the beach -- rarely getting their bottoms wet. Then, as the wave recedes, they sprint after it, snapping up the morsels it has dredged up from the depths. They have little idea of the sea, its immensity ? stretching all the way to Australia or Ireland - its treasures, its power, its absolute necessity if not only their life but all life is to survive on earth. In all ways dependent on the sea, they simply, mindlessly harvest its bounty. ?So, too, the terns that dart swiftly just above the waves. They too search the shallows for food, but do not heed the vastness of the sea.

As I have done all my life. Like the sandpiper and the term, I graze shallows and beaches on which like the sea, God continues to fall, take what I need and want as though rightfully mine, then turn my back and, flipping a seashell or two in my hand, walk nonchalantly away. Unfazed, God keeps coming. Like the breakers, relentlessly drilling and pounding away, spreading largesse across the cool sands, never giving up, sending endless messages of call and love, and even as the dark falls and the human lights that crowd the bays and highlands flicker possessively on God continues to storm our shores.

I remember once on the Jersey Shore, I sat on a bench at the ocean?s edge, on a lawn slowly crumbling into the sea, but far enough from the crashing waves that I would not get wet. It was the anniversary of my ordination, and I was thinking about my work as a priest, about the demands it puts upon you, about results that are never very encouraging, about the decline in numbers and about the scandals of the priesthood that only complicate an? already difficult task. The waves attacked the sea wall just below my feet, slowly but inexorably wrecking the complex of iron rods, metal sheets, old railroad ties and boulders that formed it. I imagined that the waves were God or his messengers - hunting me as they hunted that sea wall. And, wanting to think that I had done enough, I boldly resisted. I stayed in my chair, safe from the waves and the spray, and I almost dared God to take any more of me than he already had. I sat there for a short time, and then went inside, still dry, and I imagined that God was as disappointed with me as I was with myself.

?Another time, on a gentler day, I was walking quietly along a beach near Boston. ?I was on retreat, but I was mingling my reflections with bird watching -- probably sandpipers.? Although the morning was cool, I took my shoes off to shuffle barefoot through the silent surf, and rolled my pants legs half way up the calf. I did not pay attention to the waves. Suddenly, a rogue wave slapped up against me and soaked my pants well above the knees. I turned and looked out to the sea, as though scanning for the culprit, but it was gone, and the surf was gentle again.

I recalled then what the nuns in Hawaii had told me. I gave them a couple retreats some years ago, and between the two retreats; I decided to go for a walk along the ocean's edge, outside Honolulu. The sisters were not enthused about this, especially as I was going alone. Since I persisted, they advised me, Father, never turn your back on the sea. Keep your eye on it at all times. They warned me never to trust its pacific look. It can serve up wholly unexpected waves that will sweep you off your feet. How like God, I thought, and I was very careful that day, as I am in all my doings with him and the sea.

The beautiful God, the provident God, the demanding God, the faithful God, the dangerous God. It's all reflected there in the sea. It is only an image of course, and the image does break down. I was for example mugged at knifepoint and shed some blood on a Pacific Ocean beach in Mexico. The irony is that it happened while I was walking and praying in the dark, praying to a God represented for me by the dark and rolling sea. It is also hard to think of this imagery at times of marine disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes. That's when I have to remember that however like God is to the sea, he is not the sea.?

But we are always sandpipers.

I return to these thoughts when I am called upon to teach and preach about such mysteries as the Holy Trinity. If God is an ocean and I am a sandpiper, what right do I or the Church - have to explain the ocean to other sandpipers Something tells me I have no business doing this. It's far too brazen. It?s like a sandpiper telling the terns about the sea. What do they know? But I try. Because, like the shells thrown up on the beach, the Trinity is pretty near all I know for sure about God. The rest is worship.