Companion on the Journey
It was at the beach last summer. I raced down the sand and splashed into the water until it was deeper than my knees, then plunged in. The shock of cold was not unpleasant, but refreshing. The salty taste on my lips reminded me of coming to the same beach when I’d been a child many years ago.
Joyfully, I started swimming with the same abandon I’d had back then. I threw myself into the waves, dove smoothly under them, and floated on top of them. I felt deliciously free. I rested on the water as if in a cradle, and gazed up at the sky. It was an intense, burning blue with flashing seagulls wheeling and calling above me.
I felt part of it all. The mineral-filled water I moved in was very like the water in my own body. I remembered that the earth’s surface is about two-thirds water, and that our bodies are also about two-thirds water. Maybe that similarity of proportion was some indication of how God designed us and the earth to complement each other.
I started to swim parallel to the shore and thought about it. The ocean bore me up and swirled with life below me. I could feel kelp swishing past. Then I laughed, with a face full of salt water. The ocean reminded me of God’s love.
Just as water was both inside and outside me as I swam, so is God’s love. God’s love powers me, energizes me, pulses through me and enables my life, just as water does. It also flows through the entire world outside me, through the people I see, the trees that give me shade and air, and the clouds that give beauty to my days along with precious water.
I trust in God’s love to bear me up the same way I can trust myself to the buoyancy of the waves. It supports me.
And yet I must respect God’s love the way I respect the power of the ocean. If I were to thrash against it, I could end up tumbled to the sand below, or worse. I need to go with the ocean’s flow, and with God’s will, to come out safe on the surface.
I turned toward the shore and began to swim in. It felt good to use my muscles to push through the strong waves. I decided to try and trust God’s love more, to go with it and rest in it, the way I could in the ocean.
Passarelli, mother of three, is a member of Christ Episcopal Church, Los Altos.
