Write Brain Wednesday: Natures washing machine

Thought I start sharing some meanderings created from the Write Brain workbook exercises. The task was:

Choose ONE word that appeals to you:  Trophy,  Bible,  Inhale,   Giraffe,  Weed,  Lava,  Crush,   Banana, Mask,  Fender,  Gas

Choose ONE setting that most appeals to you: At a circus,   During a war,   In a space station,  Under a full moon,  On a beach,  At a park

Choose ONE starting phrase that most appeals to you:  If I could stop,   I once asked,  The first day,  If you must know,  The hurricane neared


Start your story with the phrase and incorporate the setting and the word. I went with  

Bible    On a beach    If I could stop

Nature’s Washing Machine

          If I could stop the world for a day, a moment, a lifetime, I’d sit and contemplate. Contemplate what?  The real meaning of the bible perhaps?   A word.  A phrase.  A sentence.  Which one?  Which one speaks to you, leads you somewhere, answers a question. Do you take it literally or figuratively?  How do you know which one is right?  It doesn’t have to be right.  It’s what you make of it. 

          Sit down on a beach and count the grains of sand. Impossible….yes.  Now just let the sand sift through your fingers.  Feel the texture, the heat, the cold. Is it wet or dry?  Depends on the time of day doesn’t it.  Is the tide in or out?  Sand sifts through your fingers like the thoughts in your head.  Sliding through, past, dropping down to rejoin the bits on the ground. Some sticks to your hand, Adheres to the lines and wrinkles of your palm, between your fingers, under your fingernails -  sparkling, shiny bits of dust.  Sift through the sand on your palm.  All shapes and sizes: rough or smooth, large or small, hard or soft.  Your thoughts.  Just like your thoughts.  Hard edges,  soft moments.  You can hold on to them or brush them away like the sand.   Sand. Countless  grains of sand. Particles of life.   

          Is it possible to catch the thought of the person who sat here before you, running their hands across the sand, sifting it through their fingers?   So many grains of sand, so many thoughts left behind.  Where do they all go?  Tumbling out to sea in a wash of waves, being cleansed and returned - full of peace, full of quiet power.  Nature’s washing machine for the mind.