Parting the red sea

Rainy, overcast skies are not keeping me apart from the surf at the summer house this Sunday morning.

The high bacteria count is.

This week the Rhode Island Department of Health closed Fogland State Beach in Tiverton.

The sparkling Sakonnet River’s blue-green waters are now an unappealing reddish color.

Scripture documents one of the first recorded occurrences of a red tide, the first of the ten plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus:

“By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, I will strike the waters which are in the river with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood… The fish that were in the river died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink the water of the river.”

According to the Rhode Island Sea Grant Fact Sheet, “There are millions of microscopic plants (phytoplankton) that exist in almost every drop of coastal seawater. With the right conditions, (sunlight and proper nutrients), these plants photosynthesize and multiply, creating a bloom. Most of these blooms are harmless, but a few species of phytoplankton cause red tides that are poisonous to marine animals and to humans.”

So, as I wait for nature to flush out the toxins near our seaside home, my thoughts are 5,000 miles away at another windswept, rain-drenched beach in Brazil.

Hundreds of thousands of young people from around the globe gathered at Copacabana Beach for World Youth Day 2013.

Pope Francis told them to imagine that they were with Jesus on the seashore.

As a religion writer, I have great interest in the pontiff’s first trip abroad and even more so because he is with Portuguese kin.

I am full-blooded Portuguese. All my forebears arrived in New England at the turn-of-the-twentieth century, emigrating from the island of St. Michael in the Azores.

Yet I also have ties to Brazil.

My mother’s godmother Dina left here to return to her husband’s homeland, settling in Sao Paulo. I have cousins living there that I have never met.

According to news reports, a wrong turn in downtown Rio De Janeiro brought Pope Francis into a crowd of Brazilians who swarmed his vehicle.

Unconcerned for his own safety, Pope Francis waved to the people through open windows and even kissed a baby as he passed.

A modern-day prophet parts the sea.

Pope Francis makes a world of difference

Just before twilight, we hike to the mountain lake. It is bitter cold, and the lake is an endless field of virgin snow.

A bright blue ice house sits on the surface, and I wonder if the occupant is safe inside.

As night falls, we climb the steep hill to the country inn and yearn to be warm again.

I imagine the huge keeping room, the logs burning brightly in the fireplace, the plaid wingback chair that I long to sink into.

On an anniversary weekend getaway in New Hampshire, we are three hours away from home; but distance will not erase the workings of my mind.

No matter where I go, I cannot escape the happenings of this past week.

It is a great time to be a religion writer.

Moving the red and black checkers on the other side of the table, I set my laptop down and begin to write in the midst of the busy lobby, while guests check in and children race back and forth.

A woman settles onto the couch with her grandson. She speaks French to the child, and the beautifully sounding words are like music, so foreign to my ears but yet so natural.

The people of the world came together this week in a way I have never experienced before.

Awaiting news of the new pope, all eyes were fixed on the Vatican; and in Latin, Italian, Spanish, English and thousands of other dialects spoken around the planet, word finally came.

The new world leader and successor to the See of Peter is Pope Francis.

Seventy-six-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina had been elected by the conclave.

Who?

And then the reporters went to work:

The first Jesuit … the first non-European in a millennium … the first Latin American … the first Argentinian … humble … compassionate … devoted to the poor … an advocate for social justice … a scholar and teacher … lives simply … rides the bus … a man of the people ... unpretentious … wears a white cassock and simple wooden cross … slips out of the Vatican to pay a bill and then again to visit an ailing priest in the hospital … preaches from the pulpit like a parish priest rather than sitting and reading in the tradition of his predecessors … the first pope to choose Francis (with no Roman numeral after his name) in honor of the saint, a servant of the sick and poor …

And the people rejoiced.