…Look to the rock from which you were hewn,

and to the quarry from which you were dug…

–      Isaiah 51:1

(from today’s church bulletin)

This post is dedicated with gratitude to Heather and Jill.

More than two years ago we embarked on a collective journey from three states.  Our destination: North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  We each needed a break.  As the universe would have it, our stars were in alignment.  We packed our families and our hopes.  Soon we were all headed toward the same narrow strip of land.

Our friendship is deep.  One of our favorite topics of conversation is the cultural tug of war between shine and substance.  You see, we people are all uniquely blessed with interior beauty – our thoughts, intentions and abilities.  Too often our world judges our books only by our illustrated covers that are almost invariably air brushed, cartooned or just plain fake.  The disparity between these realities can be awfully hard on a soul – both for those who do and those who do not meet the prescribed beauty ideal.

Such conversations, along with some fun, filled our time together.  The final morning of the trip I headed out on the beach for one last sunrise walk.  As light peeked over the ocean, I began wondering how I might carry a small piece of our trip home.  In general I don’t like “things,” but I needed something to take with me – some small token of the Good we had shared.

I trusted I would know what I sought when it showed itself.  It was not a shell; I don’t collect those, and the Outer Banks are known for beating them to pieces.  It was not the warped sheet of plywood that washed up over night.  It was not a lot of things.  Until it appeared.

The dialogue in my head: I’ll know when I know…step, step, brick.

There on the shoreline at low tide lay a brick.  A bricklet, really.  One can only imagine its journey.  My creative writer wants it to have originated in England 100 years ago, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

To call it a brick, even a bricklet, is not accurate.  It’s more like a nugget, the essence of brick.  It is Heart of Brick, like an artichoke that has been freed from its outside layers.

It is both deep and bright in color, as though it has just been polished.  And that’s just it: it has indeed been polished.  This brick entered the Atlantic Ocean some time back, and it has had quite an experience.  It’s not forgetting this ride for a long, long time.

When you think brick, you think rough and hard and sharp-edged.  Bricklet is none of these.  Bricklet is smooth, supple and rounded.  It is soft and forgiving, forgiven.  It is mercy.  Bricklet has been kicked in salt water and surf long enough to have been worn to its essence.  It has experienced dermabrasion of the ages.  It’s like a new-born baby’s butt.

And my point?

There are two things that struck me as I stared down at a lone weary brick on that Nags Head beach.

• We people have also had our moments of being kicked by life.  We have been dragged through the surf and across great reefs and spat out on some foreign shore.  If by no other means, our very habits kick our own butts; we wear down our own crisp corners.  Generally it is also true there are underlying reasons for our pain.  As a result, our edges are worn, our bricks one ounce short of a stacker.  We are not perfect.

• Plus, perfection is deceiving.  I wish I’d known this in high school – the place I dreaded each and every morning for three years.  I was of the country and tobacco farms; it was of the country club.  The two just don’t mix.  There were plenty of perfect girls in my school, especially those in my grade.  They were at the same time really smart and great at school, athletic, multi-faceted, rich and, to rub sea salt in the wound, thin.  Damn them.  At the time I imagined myself the only bricklet in the school – a freak who lacked completely formed edges.  I had missing brick matter.  It was only upon growing and hurting and being formed by my own experiences that I realized those girls, the Snotty Bouncy Girlies of the world (oh, and L, the double-crossing “friend” who moved to their neighborhood and pretended not to know me until nearly the last day of school when she finally apologized), they weren’t necessarily happy.  Some were unwelcoming and even unkind to the likes of me because they were miserable.  Some but not all lacked substance, and for all that country-club house, many were internally, spiritually or emotionally homeless.  Try as they might, they could not meet their parents’ expectations.  Country girl had it easy.  Here’s the thing: anything, like a “whole” brick, that is all bright and shiny and perfect-seeming, is not only likely to be a lie, it will end up later in life stuck in mortar.  The perfect brick is destined to be imprisoned forever on the façade of someone’s soul-less country-club home.

Perfectionism, it seems, is a special kind of Grim Reaper.  Sooner or later everyone’s number is up, whether or not we decide to get real and admit that it’s not working for us, that life is not the fairy tale we sometimes pretend.  And this is true for all of us – nicegirls and meangirls alike – in every zip code.  Perfection is a lying bitch.  Ironically the only way to win is to admit defeat, let go of our delusions and get honest.  (Hint: It helps to start with discovering why we need our lies – by understanding the roles they fill.  It is different for every one of us.)

~~~

Bricklet is looking more and more appealing to me at this point.  I WANT TO BE BRICKLET.

Bricklet has been beaten down to its core, its true self.  Bricklet isn’t wasting anyone’s time or taking up unnecessary air space.  Bricklet is Bricklet, and that’s what makes it just right.  (Notice I didn’t say perfect.  Just right = exactly what and where one is meant to be, often best seen by taking the long view, by looking in retrospect at the big picture.)

Our storms and reef-crashing tosses in the sea hurt.  They are hard.  The important thing with much of life is to remember to see our hard tosses on the shore for the gifts they offer.  Sit with it, lick your wounds, heal and then thank God for the experience.  You are not a little more worn at your edges as much as a little more formed.  You are closer to being your true You.

Hallelujah.

~~~

The other thing about Bricklet that still entertains my thoughts is this: Bricklet was no accident.  Remember, our good friend was formed.  It is not accidental that it took this shape and qualities.  It is the direct result of a series of life events.  Do you remember grade-school modeling clay – the stuff you buy in long strips, often in different colors?  They keep it near the crayons at the True Value Hardware near me.  Bricklet came from this clay, the color of adobe.  There are ridges and valleys that appear to have been formed by a creator’s hand.  You see where I’m headed with this, don’t you?  Though no bad experience can be explained away by God entirely (unless you’re a Calvinist), the more important thing is that we’re already known.  We are intended.  We are loved in spite of our foibles, scars and mistakes – perhaps even more for them.  Further, we are intended to be used for a higher purpose for the unique shapes and forms we take in life’s waters.

My grandfather was known as the most honest man in our rural farming community.  He was Good to the core, with an inner Southern-Baptist, Boy-Scout brick nugget.  He was the real thing.  Although he died in 1951, the last tobacco rows he plowed in what is now a pine forest still stand.  Walking through the spindly pines, if you look carefully, you’ll see the gentle rises and falls of once-tall tobacco rows.  He loved the land, meaning his hard work and rough hands expressed his love for creation.  I like to think Papa Blalock had a hand in the forming and finding of Bricklet.  My vision of God is often my slight-of-stature, gentle grandfather in round, wire-rimmed glasses forming clay in his worn hands.

Though I never knew him, I don’t fancy him the kind of man who would injure a brick for the sake of making it a little more interesting to the eye.

~~~

Pastor Gordon at my church has a way of timing his stuff.  Today he posed questions in the children’s sermon.  Who are you?  And whose are you?  What forms you?

He had all the pat answers, the usual, reliable and comforting answers.  (not that there’s anything wrong with that)  To turn that around on us and this and Bricklet, whose are you?  What forms you?  (During today’s sermon I reached in the bag under my seat and gave Bricklet a pat on the head.)

~~~

I say often that if your [fill in the blank: harmful habit, addiction, self-destructive thoughts or other imperfection] saved you from the once uncontrollable circumstances of your life, thank God for it.  Be grateful for the long, hard journey.  You have been worn down to your essence by one long ocean ride that ended in being coughed up on a strange beach.  Dude, you have seen it.  Yet, your (figurative) country-club niceties that weren’t would only have held you back, locking you in superficial mortar for all eternity.  Instead, you are heart, core and substance.  You have no wasted space; you are intensely and beautifully shaped.  Now that rocks.

~~~

The substance thing, which I didn’t plan, is the perfect transition to this.  C.S. Lewis said, “You don’t have a soul.  You are a soul.  You have a body.”

We are the Heart of Brick, the substance and core, the stuff that really matters in the end.  Our bodies are just the shiny wrappers.

Thank God.

It would be Hell to spend decades trapped in mortar on the façade of some country-club home.

© Mitzi Viola, 8/24/08