Stephen Beck

My friend Edrid wrote me last Friday and asked if I had heard the news about Dan's death. I was shocked yes, but mostly deeply saddened...

I did not know Dan well, as an Enlightenment Intensive is not a place really where one gets to visit with another. Three years ago though, I waited with others for a man at the Ontario airport, whom they were all calling Delta Dan to arrive. His plane was late but hs story upon meeting him was better - "it was an incredible snow storm in Utah. I canceled my first plane reservation so I could go out and ski all day. It was incredible powder. Perhaps the best day of skiing ever! I drove through an incredible traffic jam because of the snow just making it to the airport"... I sat there in the car as we drove up the mountain thinking, "God, what a neat guy!" His behavior and passion as he followed his question at the Enlightenment Intensive did not betray this assessment...

As a surfer, one looks for two things in a surfing partner. One who will watch out after them if they get in trouble. Second, for some who will push the experience of the surfing day to its limit, not chance taking - no! but of another who will make this day in the ocean the most incredible experience and joy at being alive on this day. I experienced that spirit in Dan, and from reading the post of others, so did everyone else who has written...

It would easy for the casual observer - and wrong!!! to think of Dan as a risk taker, that somehow his pursuit of his passions somehow lead to his untimely demise. Anyone who has sailed extensively, like I have, or those of you who fly, know that reckless people don't last too long against the bigness of the elements. From all with who i have talked, Dan an was not a risk taker but someone who reached with his passion into the experience of life as he saw to live it...

There is a love poem that has been playing over in my head since I heard of his death and line "love is not for the weak of heart". Dan had a "big heart" that called him constantly back to the things he loved to do, to the ocean...

I'll see you at the beach Dan - and then well see where the day takes us from there:-)))...

My love and prayers go out to Dan's family to his friends...

With Respect and Love,


SALT

I awaken,
the taste of salt across my lips,
the smell of the shared earth
rising in the space between us,

folding into the cotton landscape
of the silent womb that contains us,
two separate bodies
floating

together
in a sea of surrender.

Outside
I can hear
the roar of the ocean
as it breaks across the beach,

its white pilgrims singing
as they reach the promised shore
where they collapse in a quiet kiss
and surrender to the earth their treasure -

and to fate,
as the steady hand of the undertow
pulls their lost forms back into the sea.

I love you like no other!

Still
I can feel my soul
being pulled with them
into the emerald sheets of the sea,

across the salty down of jade, as I am
delivered into the currents of a larger will -
alone,

loves final request,
I surrender all claims to you
and yield the salt on my lips
back to the sea.

***
Our love is a swell of hunger and sand,
born in the salt of our wanderings,
blessed in the currents of all to which we surrender.

***

In the morning
we will wake together
our skin still blushing in the fire
of soft almond and rose,

the hunger of our bellies
swelling in the braided air of moss
and salt that pulls us back to the beach,

its ashen face
puckering in the continual kisses of brine ,
happy to be walking in two worlds -
for it is simply not enough to love another person,
as to be wild and human is to love all that is offered in that space
between.

Down the beach
I see a gull rising into the wind,
its proud beak bursting with salty treasure
that it carries back over the ocean -
and I can see that love is not for the weak of heart,

yet from within
the ocean's thunderous chants
I hear it calling everyone to embrace all that is offered in this day,

smiling at the wisdom of its own surrender
it releases a small shell from between its glistening lips -
a once cherished kiss

surrendered to the currents -
a salty diamond from a shared soul
waiting on the shore to find us.

Stephen Beck