All my Juice is Gone

I left a little before 6:30 this morning. Skies are mostly clear but there are some large ominous clouds in the north western distance.

As I enter the parking lot it looks like those clouds are over Catalina.

I start off with a pleasant 7 mile run through the harbor and then head out for my swim at about 7:50.

As I walk down the stairs, the water does not look like it has the magical mystical clearness it had yesterday. Hard to say though if that is because it is earlier and the light is not as bright.

There is just a little texture on the water but it is mostly glassy.

I can see tons of lobster buoys scattered all over.

When I get to the beach, the water feels about the same as it has for the past week. There are about five other swimmers finishing up as I am starting to make my way out.

There is really no surf to speak of.

Once I swim past the surf line, one of the swimmers stops and I say “good morning” and ask about the water visibility. He tells me he can’t hear what I am saying. I just wish him a good day and head south.

The water feels really good and I am delighted. It feels a notch warmer than yesterday. Of course it may also be that I just finished a long run so my core temperature is likely running high.

As the swim moves on, I do get colder but it’s overall pretty great.

The visibility is definitely not nearly as good as yesterday. However I am loving the clouds. The entire western horizon is lined with these large puffy clouds.

I’m thinking of a sentence I wrote in yesterday’s post about Jesus being not so much a literal humanoid being existing in some celestial residence with a bunch of celestial type of stuff but rather more akin to a horizon. So I am gazing upon the horizon as an act of embracing Christ. Christ as horizon, especially this horizon, makes a bunch more sense than Christ as humanoid being.

I have great respect and reverence for depictions of heavenly realms. these stories are found in so many of the religions of the world and even in modern near death experiences of people today. However, these are stories and visualizations that can only be consumed by our human minds with their biological limitations and their ability to comprehend existence within the confines of sight, and sound and feelings that we know and understand on a day to day basis.

When we die or otherwise cease to exist as the finite identity of who we know ourselves to be, our atoms are dispersed into the energy of the universe. What then? What are the terms of consciousness after our biology of humanness fades away. Can we even begin to know or understand this within the confines of our current means of perception. Probably not. The best we can do is create stories that our present consciousness can understand within the limits of our everyday awareness. These stories will naturally include things that one imagines can be seen and felt and heard.

Are these stories lies that we tell ourselves or do they reflect great truths that we just have no means of comprehending given out biology and our experience and memory of what it is to be.

When Jesus died, is he sitting on some throne and dressed in a robe or is he some mass of energy that floats and intermingles and always has intermingled with all that is…whatever it is to be one that is.

I’m gonna guess that we have absolutely no capacity to even imagine what Jesus is or what anything is beyond our finite human experience. However we have to create these stories. We have to project our ideas upon the fabric of our collective memory because that is all that we have an we use what we have because that is what we have and we have to use it.

These stories are the truth that we weave and give meaning to our todays and tomorrows and yesterdays that will soon disappear and dissolve when we pass away.

So I weakly hold to the solidity of the story. I am eager to enter into the ethos that lies underneath its texture and plot. However I cannot accept it as absolute that represents the literal description of the things that shall be and always have been.

So I look upon this horizon and I reach and I rest in the reaching knowing that the very act of reaching is enough. What lies beyond will respond to my reach in therein I find infinite existence and eternal life.

I finish up and I am pretty exhausted. I usually have a lot of juice left after a swim but yesterday and today I have felt a little spent. I mean its all good. I feel great. I’m just glad to be done and don’t have the energy to turnaround and do this again right this second.

I am asked by a couple beach walkers about the water temperature. I imagine that most who are not as familiar with water temps as I am could easily assume the water may be in the 40s. I also see a lot of walkers out today with these down overcoats, gloves and hats on and coffee in their hands.

I head back to the car with just my trunks and it feels great but definitely not toasty.