Belief with the Whole Body
It’s a beautiful morning after the last two days of grey and wet. Cold, but beautiful. I leave the house at about 10:30 and it reaches the mid 50s but I can see some clouds beginning to converge near the coast. So I better get on this now. I also want to beat the onshore winds due any time now.
When I get to the parking lot I can see Catalina in the distance and a row of white puffy clouds in between us and the island. The air is pretty still and the water looks fairly smooth.
When I get to the beach it looks like the sand has come up just a notch. The sand is now covering the base of the ramp except for the west corner. Previously it was one big step to the sand.
After setting down my stuff, I decide to get in the water just south of my usual spot. There seems to be fewer rocks to deal with here and I’m right, there are. The initial 10 feet of water is much easier to walk on and then it’s easy to just start swimming.
There is more surf today than Tuesday but this swell has an actual lull between sets (like almost all swells) so getting past the surf is not a big deal.
More clouds have accumulated and the general brightness in the air seems to fluctuate but is more dim than bright over most of the swim. The water is pretty nice though. It’s not clear like Tuesday but there are some pretty large warm patches that are a very welcome presence.
I’m thinking of an email I sent last night to Satya Robyn, a Pure Land Buddhist who I read about in Tricycle magazine followed by reading her book Coming Home. I don’t ever do this but I just felt compelled to reach out and thank her for her work. I knew next to nothing about Pure Land Buddhism and found it super interesting. I wrote about this several posts ago, but in the west we hear more about the philosophy and meditative practices of Buddhism. We hear very little about the more devotional schools of Buddhism which actually are the most popular in the east.
My guess is that Buddhism becomes this refuge for many in the west who are tired of fundamentalist leaning western religions that require one to hold a set of beliefs that just don’t make sense to many modern sensibilities. If I’m sick of being told I have to have certain orthodox beliefs about Jesus, Pure Land Buddhism may not feel safe. In Pure Land Buddhism you have Amida Buddha that provides refuge to all who chant the nembutsu.
One may just think that’s weird but there is something about how Satya shares her practices and fondness with this spiritual path that I found so appealing. It didn’t make me want to convert to Pure Land Buddhism even though I would happily chant the nembutsu with Satya’s sangha if I had the chance. It did cause me to reflect on my own Christian tradition with a lense centered more in the heart than the mind.
She spoke a tiny bit of this but she really didn’t have to call it out. There was just something in her tone. It is similar to when I read Henri Nouwen or Brennan Manning talk about Jesus. They just don’t seem caught up in the literalism of beliefs even though they absolutely believe in Jesus. They don’t talk about what or how to believe and the consequences of not believing. They simply present their tradition and what it has to offer and you can feel through their writing that it has transformed them and softened them.
It strengthens my conviction that the stories of our faith are not about clinging to the details of the plot but about finding our own heart in the story. It makes me think that this leads to a different kind of a belief. Not a belief stuck in our head where God must be a man in the sky on the throne with Jesus in a robe sitting at his right side - rather a belief of the heart that transcends words. More than the heart even. A belief that we can engage with our whole bodies.
The words are all mere pointers to something that lies outside of the realm of words and even concrete thought images. However given our experience as humans, these words and images are all that we have and all that we can use to imagine. And yet I think these things - Christ, Amida Buddha - are more then symbol. They are so incredibly real. I think we are invited to interact with them as more than an intellectual exercise. We are invited to bring our whole bodies into communion with the essence of who they are.
How that looks is sheer mystery and often bafflement and all I can do is surrender to it and let it be what it is right now. It’s not so much something I pursue but something I allow to unfold and watch.
Well look at that. I guess I’ll wrap it up with this. The swim was pretty great. There were warm spots but I got cold at the end but it was all good. Getting back to shore was a total chore. I tried to come back to shore at that same spot that is further south of my usual spot. Then I got pushed by the surf even further south and had to quickly point due north to avoid some large protruding rocks. Then I practically rolled and flopped my way over rocks all the way to the sand. I must have looked pathetic but I just could not seem to get to my feet. Eventually I did and tried to put on my “I meant to come in like that” face.
