Swimming is slowly on the up and up for me (Note-I took a swimming lesson a while back as mentioned in a previous post and am trying get better at the basics of swimming). I can now make it from one end of the pool to the other without stopping and am starting to get the breathing thing figured out. One of my favorite parts of swimming is having my head in or under the water. I love the feeling of being totally enveloped by an atmosphere that gently holds me up in a full body hug of sorts. It's like being in a different world. I only wish I could breathe water like a fish and stay down for extended periods of time. During the front crawl, when my face is submerged and my eyes are liberated by the snazzy little swimmer's goggles, I get to study such things as the pool tiles, lines & stripes, and other bodies that happen to move through my field of vision.
Water has a very gracious quality about it-that of equal buoyancy for all. Now, I will admit that some folks do experience floating better than others and certainly some people can swim very well while others can't at all. However, I watch underwater as bodies that struggle to move and are bound by the relentless pull of gravity on land are magically liberated to be able to move gracefully underwater. Even their appearance takes on a special degree of beauty irregardless of whether the bodies are old or young, strong or fragile, heavy or thin, wrinkled or smooth, etc. The water seems to equally support, love, and beautify all living beings that enter it's hug irregardless of how they appear on land.
An author from the 19th century once commented on how the earth is surrounded by an atmosphere of God's grace as real as the air we breathe. I wonder if sometimes I just need the right God given goggles to see others within this atmosphere? Wouldn't it be neat if, when looking through the eyes of God's gracious favor, I noticed less the gravitational pull of sin on people and more the beautifying grace of God's favor that buoys people up and allows even the most unattractive, by human standards, to move with graceful beauty not naturally their own?
2 comments:
Very nice Hanan. Thanks
my family is a water family, my husband a true water man. he cannot bear to drive by an inviting river or lake on a hot summer day and not pull over and jump in.
our best family vacations are spent on the banks of rivers and creeks. and one of our all time favorite water activities is boogie boarding in the frigid ocean of the Oregon coast. We load up wetsuits and boards and drive from Portland to spend the day on a favorite beach.
My husband will spend the most time in the water, swimming to the outside of the waves where the big boys like to play. I prefer to stay closer to shore, the inside, waist high in the water, catching the breaks and white-water slop. My kids love it, too.
Water is my favorite metaphor for the love of God. I have spent hours meditating about this while waiting for a break to ride in the foamy ocean.
Good on you for strengthening your swimming skills. Get out of the chlorinated water of the pool this summer and discover the wildness of swimming in rivers and lakes. It is incredible.
(we used to take our kids to Battleground Lake when they were little. Great place for young families. We don't go there anymore since the kids are bigger and can handle themselves in wilder waters. But oh the memories we stored up at Battleground!)
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