But first, let me explain.
It all happened when a friend phoned. She, it appeared, was sitting on the shore beside the North Sea.
"It's wonderful here," she enthused, "just listen to the sea . . . " with which she placed her phone close to the water's edge.
I listened . . . and, if you click here, you can listen too.
I don't know what you felt, but I was totally gripped by the power of that sound . . . the relentless energy of the surging waves was mesmerising.
Wouldn't you agree that, when it comes to our senses, we're inclined to give priority to things visual. Had I been sitting beside my friend on the shore, I suspect it would have been the splendour of the coastline that would have dominated my attention. Yes, I'd have been conscious of the sounds around me, but only as a background to the visual feast.
However, listening down the phone to the water's rhythmic pounding, it was the power of the sound itself that held me transfixed.
And it made me think . . . it made me think of natural power. Of the power of the tide, a surge of energy so strong that it literally lifts oceans . . . and water is heavy.
Of the power of the wind . . . a force that, if so inclined, can unheedingly bring massive structures crashing to the ground.
And we need to remember that the tide isn't the water breaking over the shingle, it's the invisible energy moving that water. And the wind isn't the air howling in the chimney, it's the invisible energy moving that air.
Meteorologists can track these natural forces, but not control them. The only way we know of their existence is by the effect they have.
Summoned by the magnetic energy of the moon, the water surges up the beach.
Powerless in the face of an invisible rush of energy that transforms air into wind, umbrellas are blown inside-out.It's an energy that man couldn't possibly reproduce or quench . . . yet, except in extreme conditions, such as tsunamis or tornados, how little thought we give to its presence.
Click here, listen to the wind, and see what I mean.
But, wait a moment. Don't we, too, consist of water and of air?
Haven't we all felt the power that the full moon exerts on the water in our bodies?
Haven't we experienced in our lungs the energy-charged air that has blown through the trees and in at the window?
As I listened on the phone to the North Sea tide surging over the pebbles, I was tuning in to the source of universal energy . . . to the energy that unites everything in creation.
No wonder I can't forget it.
