Summer surfing

Summertime and the livin' is easy.  The sun is out, the sand is warm, the wind is in your face and the surf is up. 


A beautiful cresting wall of water teases the serious surfer to ride her, to feel the motion of her vast intercontinental body of water beneath his small, seemingly solid, board on which the surfer clings with toes and heels using every muscle in his legs, stomach, shoulders, arms, neck, twisting, turning, leaning into every move she makes. 


Determined to ride her to the end, his concentration is focused with the strength of an Olympian, set to meet the great challenge as he races with her into the shallows where she suddenly breaks, laughing at him, "Ah, man, if you think you can really ride me, feel what I feel, go where I go, experience the ride of life, try again and again. Give me everything you've got, become one with me until one day you will experience what you were born to feel."


Life is a ride on the great wave of time/space.  It is the greatest experience of existence and yet the greatest challenge. It's interesting that in the Gospel of Mark Jesus is described as being asleep in the back of the boat as the disciples are tossed mercilessly about by a storm on the lake.  When, finally, he awakens, he rebukes the wind, calming the storm, and says to them, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:39)


Recently, I was speaking with someone who was very discouraged with his job search. While he manages a national retail store, he is challenged by a micromanaging power hierarchy and earns what he considers to be very low pay for all his efforts.  He sounded frustrated with his search for a more meaningful livelihood.  I completely understand how he feels.  I'm sure we all do.  We all have reached for something that we dearly wanted and found it illusive.  


In the past, we were able to reach for, work hard, use all the wiles in our command and attain what we sought.  He told me about times when he was successful at almost everything he ever pursued.  He had earned a lot of money, yet he lost it when the economy nosedived.  


"Why?" he asked, rhetorically, observing back then, he also was an atheist.  


"Why now," he said, "when I believe in God, is this happening?"


It seemed to him it should be the reverse.  I wanted to respond, but instead, remained soberly attentive, respectful of his angst.  Who hasn't been where he is right now?


"Don't you know that God chasens the ones he loves?  And, anyone who calls on Him and declares his open heart to Him, will be brought into the fold, but that means he may be chased by God, until he's caught," I wanted to say. 


It certainly seems God doesn't have a lot of interest in supporting and endorsing the collective illusion we call life on planet Earth.  In fact, God has other plans, those which we don't see, nor do we yet understand, which may call for the dissolving of our terrible illusion which is leading us further away from the necessary introspection where we would experience the great encounter. Those of us who have been challenged by God's ways, do see it, albeit dimly through a glass darkly, but we do know - at the very least - that something's up.  The divine surf is up and we have only one choice:  ride it or die.


Instead, I told him to give up and enjoy the summer.  Mother nature only takes a two-month vacation and if you miss it, you have to wait another year for her return.  In my heart, I wanted to go to the beach with a bottle of baby oil and a big lush towel and feel the heartbeat of the earth and listen to the waves as Lake Erie rhythmically washed ashore on the Hamburg beach.  I wanted to take our sailboat out into the lake until I couldn't see the Canadian or U.S. shores and watch the water breathing, rising and falling, heaving her heavy body as she moved in a slow dance with the motion of life beneath and above her.  


I wanted to feel the radiance of the sun on my face and even the burn on my shoulders.  I wanted to let the sails softly carry me on a long run on the lake. In a way, I was tired of sailing into the storms of life.  I dearly wanted a respite. 


Like the young man I spoke with, I'm in no mood to fight with the lake in an attempt to cross her. I've done that. I've sailed across to a Canadian town, using only a compass and a map, thrilled by the challenge of having faced Lake Erie's eight-foot waves, darkening skies, and our rain-slicked sails.  I loved the challenge.  It called up everything in me, all my strength.  I even broke a rib once trimming the main sail in a storm with my husband at the helm. I didn't even know I'd broken it until the next day when I couldn't move my arm.  But, it was worth it.  It was so well worth it.  Any sacrifice would have been worth the challenge of the ride in the wind and the rain.


I thought about this man's angst and I thought about my own angst over the economy, the future - my future and our human family's future.  I had been worrying.  Who isn't?


But, I've come to realize that life is like that Gospel storm on the lake, and Jesus - or the great divine parent who really, really is there - is in the back of the boat. We can trust that.  We have to trust that and if we're unwilling to enter into the great power of such a trust, we will continue to be thrown around, tossed.  Will the boat sink?  Will life throw us overboard? I don't want to find out.  


We have only two choices:  ride it or fight it.  If we fight life, we won't be able to master the ocean and we'll drown. Only fools would do that.  But, we all do it until we encounter the unbeatable, unmatchable power. Watch the news.  There are a lot of people drowning.  


Those who survive are those who trust God, the great divine, the "universe," whomever or whatever and by any name you call it ("A rose by any name would smell as sweet," Shakespeare said). They are those who have surrendered their will to "God's" will, which clearly means to ride with life, not against it, also a concept in the I Ching.  When we become wise enough to realize we are not in control of our lives, or nature, we will begin to surrender and in our surrendering, we will learn to ride because we will ride.  


It's then, when we surrender the helm to God, that we find our boat is able to navigate the storms.  While it will still challenge everything we've got in us, only then will we feel the power of the ocean below our feet, in our sails and then we will know we are alive and enter into a kind of joyousness we can't even imagine now. And, I suppose, when the wave breaks in the shallows then we'll be washed onto the shore to rest in the sun while the tide softly withdraws, giving us respite until she returns to carry us out again, into the vast mystery of her universal tidal ride.