What a beautiful morning. We have many of these here in San Diego; sometimes the freshly risen sun, especially at this time of year, is obscured by marine layer clouds for much if not all of the day. But this one is classic, high millibar goodness, the sky blemished with but the rare contrail.
I went in the ocean for the first time in about eight months the other day. It was quite the experience. Ok, I cried . . . and kinda hard for a little while. You see, it has been an interesting year or so.
Amidst relationship loss and physical infirmity (at one point both of my shoulders were killing me, along with my knee and my back - I got very familiar with every feature of the ceiling of the room I was in), I felt lost in terms of vision. As many of you know, I get pretty excited about 'visions' I have at times. Some of them must be at least somewhat legit, because a lot of times others get excited too, and some of them even come to pass as plans come together in various forms. But others seem to be a bit more fanciful, of course, and have yet to come to fruition. I've scorned many a naysayer in my day, but at this point, I like to think that I'm just an enthusiastic guy with a lot left to learn. There . . . that ain't so bad.
So this fall, as things I was only beginning to understand the full gravity of came down heavily upon me, I was pained. As I've had time to digest these things more, the misery of sleeping in the bed of physical pain I'd made myself - mostly from damage incurred via that cursed device they call 'the skateboard' - was at least matched if not exceeded by the spiritual pain I was experiencing.
Striving to view things - from microcosm one's self all the way to the planet and cosmos - in a spiritually holistic manner is quite the challenge. It's so much easier to compartmentalize the disparate and potentially conflicting sectors of any system (on an individual level, one's personal life and professional life. On a global level, industry and the environment, etc.) so they don't rub up against each other in a disagreeable way. Indeed, it is often absolutely necessary to do so when we get to the real pragmatic work of managing a project or solving a problem: the scope is just too wide to try to do it all at once. "You eat an elephant one bite at a time", as my dad reminds me often. So while the endeavor of finding vistas that offer us integrated, encompassing perspectives of that which enters our sphere of awareness seems like the right thing to do, it is anything but easy.
I read a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre recently that struck me, as quotes often do (sometimes I think about compiling all my favorite quotes into some kind of volume, like my own book of Proverbs). Now, I don't know all that much about him, but anyone who turns down being awarded a Nobel Prize has at least a little to teach us all about humility. It succinctly read: "Introspection is always retrospection". With the amount of struggle I endure to memorize what little I can retain, I'm grateful for distilled wisdom - it makes me think of other little pearls I find on occasion. They say the shortest verse in the bible is John 11:35: "Jesus wept".
Before I ended up sitting on the sand in Ocean Beach (a funky little hippie enclave of a neighborhood here in San Diego and one of my favorite places on Earth), I'd struggled to pull my seemingly shrunken and stiffened wetsuit on in the parking lot and trudged through the cold, damp sand to a few feet from the waterline and sat down. It wasn't the kind of day I hoped would mark my return to my beloved marine environment: it was cold, windy and cloudy. But I sat down with my swim fins anyways and got introspective. Which of course turned retrospective. I thought back to when I was a kid and couldn't even touch the ocean without severe anxiety, and how my first memorable wave-riding experience at Twin Lakes Beach in Santa Cruz involved watching, from the inside, the curtain of a wave engulf me and proceed to jam sand and salt water into the furthest reaches of my mouth, nose and lungs. In a manner that was congruous with the cowardice that came to color my youth, I couldn't bring myself to put my head underwater or have my feet off the bottom of the ocean from that point forward.
I remembered my first waves ridden near Capitola at 17, having needed about 10 or so years to recover from my childhood beating. I tried to recall every person I had ever surfed with, every place I had surfed, and all the seasons of life I had gone through as I had finally overcome something I thought I'd live with for the rest of my days. As I did, I was overcome with both feelings of nostalgia and loss and feelings of gratitude and blessing. The sun peeked through the clouds as I waded out into the water, noticing that tears and seawater taste about the same.
In John, Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus. There are reasons behind him doing so that I don't yet understand, but I think mostly it was to join Mary and others in mourning, showing his love for both them and Lazarus in a way they could understand. Paul tell the Romans to "Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn". As I both rejoiced and mourned the other morning as I re-entered the ocean that I loved and had missed so much, I felt comforted. As if Jesus, in the many ways was there with me, as he is now and will be always, wept too.
As I would never have guessed my life would take some of the painful turns it did this fall, so would I never have guessed that it would take some of the comforting ones it has. I found out about a Christian 'missional community' at the end of last summer that was supposedly popping up right in my own backyard here in San Diego. A manifestation of an 'intentional community', where a group of people come together seeking to lead a deliberate, examined way of life that supports a set of commonly held values, I'd been interested in learning more about them for years. At the same time, I didn't want to end up in something resembling some of the bizarre settings you hear about in the news, usually in a rather negative light. As I've gotten to know them over the last nine months or so, the people of NieuCommunities have become dear to me in more ways than I can count.
I felt so renewed as I came out of the water, and am grateful for the beginnings of the return of my physical health. Even more, I feel the stirrings of a return of vision and dreams in my 'spiritual' (read: whole) life. I may always wonder if the greater good, which I believe God has in mind for all of us, could have somehow been served in some way other than what transpired. But as I do, I also look around at a suffering world and am reminded that my problems are dwarfed when contrasted to what many people face daily. I'm accepting that it is my choice as to whether or not I want to come through this time gracefully, equipped to help others face the dark night of their souls as I've had to mine.
Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.
