I am kneeling on a paddleboard in a vast lagoon of deep, green water. The Australian bush surrounds me on three sides like a giant audience. The board has been expertly pumped up by my son and daughter, and is buoyant and stable. It flies along the top of the still water as I paddle, smooth as a magic carpet. The afternoon sun shines above the hill in front of me, colouring with orange the column of water that stretches out like a ladder before my board. I am alone in the middle of the lagoon, but I am not lonely, surrounded by the hum of nature.
I could be anywhere in the world, an intrepid explorer on my trusty craft, self-sufficient with my paddle. A life stripped back to the basics is appealing, placing at its centre the person, uncluttered by possessions, and free. On my sturdy paddleboard I am content. I wish the lagoon stretched four times its length so that I could just keep paddling, past the bushland that reverberates with the song of cicadas in the summer heat.
Yesterday, we swam early, a languid lap of the lagoon. The clear jellyfish were swarming, with hundreds visible about a metre below the surface. We delicately wended our way through them, trying to wash them out of our way with breaststroke, seeking clear patches, our feet occasionally alighting on dome-shaped softness as we kicked. We were like icebreakers, slowly forging a passageway through precarious waters.
This outdoor living is my buffer zone between one year and the next. It is a time when I disappear off the radar and away from routines. No cars or shops are anywhere near, just books and family, dirt tracks and diamond seas. Wallabies, bush turkeys and goannas are my backyard companions and the sea eagles wheel gracefully above, in lazy loops high in the sky. I work on the land, sweeping, raking, cutting back enthusiastic tendrils and branches reaching over pathways. My progress is easily measured by the growing pile of leaves and twigs I amass. This kind of exertion brings a sense of peace.
The peace of Christ is different; much more drenching and powerful. It is the peace known by the child who flees into the arms of a parent and is swept up out of harm’s way. Peace is the hallmark of the presence of Christ and Our Lady, evident in good times but particularly discernible in trying personal circumstances.
If I had a wish for the world in these early days of a new year it would be this: that we might feel the peace that Christ offers and let it spread from person to person like candlelight, all around the world.
Melissa Coburn is a Melbourne writer.
