When we first came to Ontario, I only half understood the truth that would make our community special. It came to me little by little, almost miraculously, as if the knowledge was coming from beyond me. I have no other explanation. My own well of wisdom was dry. I was confused and poking around in the dark; so if it didn’t come from God, I’m clueless on the source. I know I didn’t cook it up myself.

Here’s what I came to understand: Each and every one of us is a channel for God’s creative power. Find your switch and turn it on. I call God … God, as does most of our community. We’re comfortable with that word but if you’re not, it doesn’t change anything. Whether you call it a life force, infinite essence, or knowledge beyond knowledge, each of us is made to channel it. But almost no one does.

Back in the world we left behind, the privilege of speaking ‘with God’s voice,’ was reserved for the few, while the rest were expected to watch and worship. Here, everyone knows God’s voice; here everyone is brilliant, everyone is beautiful, everyone is athletic, everyone is a scholar, and everyone has the creative spirit at their fingertips. Everyone has a voice of wisdom.

A basketball coach once told me, “some are shooters and some are retrievers; everyone needs to understand their role and not get too big for their britches.” Here, we all are shooters and retrievers. The only way to grow too big for your britches is to tell others they’re not fit to be shooters. That was the way of the world where, as Jesus said, some love to lord it over others.

Here in our community, we are the new participation generation. We bring a variety of gifts, but honor no hierarchy of gifts. All gifts, having come from God, are treated as equals. No one need feel unfulfilled. Our one rule is not to let your gifts sleep.

I don’t hold myself to be the fountain of truth, but what I do know came to me slowly, as a gift, little by little. Jesus says, “seek and you’ll find, knock and the door will open,” but he gives no instructions on how to seek or where to knock. Maybe it’s obvious that seeking leads naturally to finding. Seek, and you will find a door made just for your spirit. I looked for a way in John’s letter and found it in helping others grab a greater payoff from their lives. How better to seek God’s mysterious love than by loving a single brother or sister? Does not the greatest river begin with one wet drop of melted snow?

In our community, the one gift treasured by all is making others feel valuable. This was Jesus’ gift … and John-John’s. I saw it first when we went to the bar together. Around him everyone is happy with themselves. Being around Jesus had to be like that: Nothing to prove. Being hungry was enough. Jesus fed. John-John was a feeder, and I would be a feeder too in this hungry world where only cynics need starve, because they have given up.

For two days, hanging on in my mind: John-John had called checking up on me. First there’d been Carolyn, and then Sagan to look after. Things get in the way. I reached John-John at home and he said “sure” to hitting the beach with me. We took his old beater which that morning he called his beach wagon, but the fact is, it was the only vehicle he owned.

All his gear rode in the back: his metal detector and a couple of rods for surf fishing, a cooler. I mostly wanted to relax and people watch. No spying intended, but if I spotted Sagan and his friend, that would be OK. We drove up the beach almost to the inlet and parked in the softer sand west of the driving lanes. John-John explained he had stopped short of the inlet just in case he wanted to throw out a line for some blue fish. Any closer and we’d be in the middle of all the surfers, he said.

The water along the inlet jetty was thick with bobbing heads as the surfers hugged their boards and waited for just the right set to appear. Others straddled their boards, peering over their shoulders as the rising water chased in toward the outer break. August would arrive in a day and the inlet traffic was heavy with bronzed bodies squeezing thrills from the Atlantic waters. How many more days of clean, glassy waves before the school bells begin to ring again? Some college students would be gone before summer’s final month was half over.

In they rode, settled on their boards, maybe ten at a time strung across the 100 yards of prime surf reaching south from the jetty rocks. In they rode and out they paddled, at least as many moving toward deeper water, flat on their boards and digging deep with muscled arms -- all the time trying not to be hit by incoming traffic.

I breathed it in from a distance, there in my chair, sunglasses set against the summer sun, nostrils full with the spoor of their joy. John-John was busy with his metal detector. He made passes back and forth in front of me, covering a 20 by 20 square of sand. Several times he stopped to dig but when he returned to our spot he made no mention of anything valuable.

“Did you spot ‘em down there?” he asked. I’d said nothing about coming to the inlet to spy on the kid. I only mentioned Sagan was going surfing with a young lady. John-John just assumed.

“I can’t tell one kid from another – not from here,” I said.

John-John carried his metal detector back to the wagon and came back with a pair of binoculars. “These will help,” he said.

I stared down at them a few seconds, thinking somehow I’d be violating Sagan’s privacy, but then took them from his hand.

“I’d find him for you but I’ve never seen the kid before,” John-John said.

I adjusted the glasses and began sweeping from the beach to out beyond the far break. I didn’t see him. Even with magnification, so many looked alike. I meticulously searched smaller areas but soon forgot my method and let my gaze wander here and there. It all felt just good. From the beach to the break, the inlet was afloat with smiles, laughter, handshakes, hugs, friendly horseplay. Not to say surfers aren’t serious – for some it’s all they live for. I thought of the skate park. This world was more sensual with the bare skin and greater mix of the genders on the beach, but both are special spaces set apart from all the rest, with their own rules and their own code. The heart of that code seemed to be the pursuit of happiness. Come for fun or don’t come.

John-John had opened a chair next to mine. He always seemed a step ahead of me on life outside the sanctuary. “They got their own little world down there,” he said.

I nodded and lowered the binoculars.

“Did you spot the boy?’

“No,” I said. “He must be in the water. It’s tough to tell one from another out there.”

“Oh, look there! He caught himself a nice wave, the dark-haired boy,”

I trained the glasses on a surfer moving fast across the face of one of the bigger waves I’d seen. “I think that’s Sagan’s friend Frankie.”

“Well then Sagan must be here somewhere,” John-John said.

The wave regained speed as it hit the inner sandbar and Frankie rode it all the way into knee-deep water, jumping off just before reaching shore. “There!” I said. “There’s Sagan now, running toward the water. See him John-John?”

“The one with the girl tagging behind him?”

”That’s him.”

“Good lookin’ kid. Good lookin’ girl. Gimme the glasses a second.”

I laughed. “What? You want to check out Sagan’s girl?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not like that! I wanna check out, you know, all of ‘em … see what’s happening.”

I handed him the glasses, wishing I could bottle this. High times in the hot sun; not thinking about good times, just going for it. I grew up in Florida but was never part of the surfing culture. My home town was 50 miles from the ocean but plenty of kids would strap boards on their cars and head for the coast. I always thought them the frivolous ones, the ones not sure what life is all about; now I think they might have it almost exactly right.

“It’s a perfect little fantasy,” I said to John-John.

“A trip to the moon on gossamer wings?”

“You surprise me John-John,” I said.

“That I would know that song lyric?”

“I guess.”

“There’s probably more about me that’ll surprise you,” he said.

“So, what do you think John-John? Is their world a fleeting fantasy? Destined to give way to boring jobs, bills, babies, arguments when girlfriends become wives?

“Maybe, or maybe not.”