Marc Mullinax

ìChildren we were ó our forts of sand were even as weak as we, High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.î ó G.K. Chesterton
ï
MARS HILL ó A favorite poem for some Christians is entitled ìFootprints,î which depicts a walker with God along the beach, sometimes with two, sometimes with one set of footprints. The single set of footprints, the poem explains, occurs when God carries the human walker.

On that beach of our existence, we can see more evidence than just footprints of the divine-human encounter. Consider the sandcastle.

Some are rather spur-of-the-moment. Others convey care and creativity. Some sandcastles are works worthy of surviving the next high tide. Others melt away, having lost their strength.
Sandcastles are something like religions:

1. They are all at sea level. None is higher ó or better ó than others.

2. All are human constructs, using blueprints from surrounding culture and scriptural texts (which themselves involve human construction). While none can use all the sand on the beach, we constructors pour meaning into these sandcastles, assuming that within its architecture lie the secrets of all the sands/world.

3. They are evidence that someone has been here before, and used the dominant raw material (in this instance, sand) to transubstantiate the common and ordinary into the uncommon and sacred. The byproduct of calling it ìsacredî is that we deny holiness of other sand (whether in sandcastles or not). This is our place. It is our home. A place to maintain and defend.

4. The constructions are beautiful and holy to the people who made them. Outsiders are looked upon with suspicion, for fear theyíll destroy. While converts are welcome, they must respect the rules of the sandcastle.

5. We name them: My castle, fortress, fort, citadel. Owning/naming anything increases its personal and emotional value.

6. We pay scant attention to other sandcastles. For instance, we rarely investigate other castles except as curiosities at best, or competing structures at worst. Only the extremely rare person would investigate all the sandcastles on all the worldsí beaches.

7. At the sandcastle, we engage in pretend play, telling stories and histories that we imagine about imaginary populations within the castle. The imaginary becomes more real with each re-telling, the castle evolves into a place to defend.

8. How long can a sandcastle last? Exactly how long can we be fooled into believing a sandcastle is our only holy ground? Wind, tides, weather, human destructiveness and the erosion of time all conspire to level every one. Just as they leveled every other sandcastle constructed long ago, by people who thought theyíd also last.

9. So much sand, so few sandcastles. So much of the world is either uninvolved in or oblivious to our meaningful structures. What, and who, does all our sandcastle activity leave out? Can one sandcastle represent all the worldís sand?

10. Each new sandcastle is one more ìtestamentî to the idea that there is truth out there ... more truth than any single structure, or all of them in concert, can possibly contain. Truth, like sand, may be shared, a shared experience. But as long as we take refuge in one sandcastle, exactly how would that sharing come to be?

We are part of an eternal story that is carried out partly in time and space. The time and space are holy, yes, but hardly of ultimate significance.

Do we stand on solid ground when it comes to spiritual matters? We can build and maintain sandcastles, and as a person of sand and dust myself, the best I can do is leave material traces of my passing, for I am not made for lasting. We are sand. We dust-creatures build on sand at sea-level, just like everyone else. Why might we think these structures will last?

ï
Marc Mullinax, who teaches the academic study of religion at Mars Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.