One of my favorite field trips as a boy was going to Stinson Beach and seeing the life that thrived in the tide pools.  Around the large rocks that dotted the Northern California coast, these “pools” would form that were inhabited by sea anemones, star fish, barnacles, and other mysterious life.  These pools of life were left behind by the receding tide.  You had to get up early in the morning and head to the beach, right after the tide had dropped, and right before it came back in.

Magical.

Tide is what I think of when things get heated between people.  Things begin to escalate.  If you are the “people”, then you can feel it welling up in you: this hot, burning, churning sensation.  It is amazing the kind of twisted life forms that come out of us and those we disagree with when the tide is high.  Bent over life forms we cannot see until they come pouring out.

Sometimes—no, most times—when we are in an argument or disagreement with someone, we would do well to let the tide go back out.  See what we are dealing with.  Form words and inflections that aren’t twisted and bent over by the rising tide within and around us.

Abraham Lincoln famously did this.  He called it the “hot letter”.  When he was angry with someone, and needed to communicate with them, he would write a “hot letter”, bury it in a drawer, and then come back and write another letter, infused with more thought and grace.

He would wait for the tide to go back out.

Can you imagine if we lived in a world where the President of the United States could just write a letter to the general public anytime he wanted, and send it with the press of a button before he had cooled down or let the tide go back out?

Can you imagine if we could?

One of the great benefits of a snail mail world was time.  It took time to write a letter.  It sat on your desk.  It then sat in an envelope.  And then in a mailbox.  You had all this time to consider and reconsider, think and rethink.  And then it took—believe it or not—days to reach the recipient.

There was all this time for the tide to go back out.

When we get into it with someone else, whether on social media or over email or over brussels sprouts and pork chops, there is an incredible benefit to waiting…

…marinading…

…before we converse again.

This is true on a soil level.  Dr. Guilio Tononi believes that this is what sleep provides.  During the day, we build up all these new memory connections in our brains, whether we want them or not.  What we ate for lunch.  That weird interaction with the cashier. The hours we spent studying. The afternoon we worked on clarinet. When we sleep, he believes, a tide comes in, of electrical waves that wash over these new connections, softening and weakening them.  By the end of a good night’s sleep, the weaker and softer connections—lunch and cashier—have been broken, and the stronger ones—study and clarinet—survive and remain.  Your brain filters out the unnecessary memories, making more space and clarity for the necessary ones.

Which is why you can’t quite get that guitar lick the night before, and then wake up and—poof!—you’ve got it!

On a soil level, you really do need to sleep on it.

On a spirit level, too.  And by that I mean, a Spirit level.  The ancient Hebrew and Greek Scriptures speak of God being at work half the day before we wake up, of the Spirit on the move healing, reconciling, redeeming the world.  There is a Spiritual tide that comes in after we’ve turned ourselves down and turned ourselves off.

In our conflicts and disagreements, our arguments and tug-of-war-ments, it always pays to stop.  

And make space.  

To sleep on it.  

And marinade.

Put the hot letter in the drawer and start again.

Allow the tide to subside and see what new life is left in its churning wake.