In the days before you could snap a photo with your cellphone and send it off immediately or post it for all the world to see, I left my home on Long Island, New York, and headed off to college in Oregon.
One of the first things I did was take a day trip to the beautiful Oregon coast with its magnificent cliffs, so different from the beaches that I was used to. On that day I bought a postcard. Back in my dorm room, I sat down to dash off a note to my parents, when I noticed the description on the back of the postcard: “Looking south on the Oregon coast.” I looked at the photo again. South?!
With my East Coast sensibilities, that picture looked north. I had grown up with the folk rule, “If the ocean is on your right, you’re looking north.” You’re probably wondering what all of this has to do with spiritual things. To be honest, sitting at that desk, I didn’t think I was on a spiritual quest. I just wanted that postcard to look correct. Only it didn’t. I stared at it for nearly an hour, wrestling with my view to force that West Coast photo to be looking south instead of looking like an East Coast north view. Try as I could, nothing changed.
