Even More

I left for the beach today at about 11:30. Although it was completely overcast earlier this morning, it is now beautiful clear blue skies.

I drive up PCH and I’m looking forward to the swim ahead. This day so utterly feels like summer.

Last night’s water temperature forecast called for another dip in temps. Surfline adjusted from 71 to 70 yesterday and then again to 69 this morning. However, I have been watching the buoy data and the temps just don’t seem to be moving. Regardless, 69 sounds pretty good to me.

When I get to the parking lot, absolutely nothing looks cold about this place.

I make my way down the stairs and get to the beach. The tide is high and there is not a whole lot of sand here for people to put their stuff.

I head out into the water and there are some shoulder high waves breaking near the shore.

I dive underneath one and my goggles slide down my face as I hit the water. I correct this and then make my way south.

If there is a dip in temps, you have me fooled. I will say that in the beginning of the swim, there are a few brief patches that feel a bit cooler than I have felt in a couple weeks but overall it just feels so great.

Thankfully, on my last swim I discovered some tricks with my camera that has been making it much more workable in the water. It’s not perfect, but my nerves are a bit more at ease now. That’s kind of one of the main points of this whole swimming schtick - to keep the nerves at ease.

The water and sunshine are such a delight. I imagine my heart opening to the water and let myself feel its energy penetrate me. It’s a gift from the ocean that I gratefully receive. As I gaze onto the horizon, I see the sun’s light reflect off of the water’s surface. There is a slight breeze and small swell so the water bounces and moves - it’s like standing on a mountain summit looking out onto a mountainous expanse that stretches out as far as you can see but the mountains are made of water and constantly moving.

I’m thinking of last Sunday’s sermon that I watched on YouTube on Wednesday and Thursday. I catch myself Wednesday listening to the service with a guarded heart. I’m bracing myself for some comment that will trigger my inner liberal theologian. The prior week’s predominately great sermon ended on this note about not giving in to “liberal theology” or something along those lines which kind of soured the message for me. So I’m at the ready for for something similar in this sermon.

I’m listening on Wednesday and just feel like I am negatively reacting to everything the pastor is saying even though he’s not really saying anything I think should put me on edge. As he talks about Jesus and his death and what it means and Paul’s thoughts on grace, I watch in my mind as the speaker paints a landscape of this three tier universe of heaven and hell and the world we live in. These tiers are filled with various characters: humans, God, Jesus, Satan, angels and demons. There is no metaphor in the portrait being painted here. All of the lines are solid and thick. I feel repelled by the imagery. I feel like a world view is being presented and I’m judged as deviant if I don’t subscribe to it and I don’t.

This is not how I want to approach listening to a sermon. I have caught myself fall into this sort of mindset many times in church here. I feel like we have all been handed a comic book and are being asked to admit we are each a character in the story and it is entirely true to life. Then it usually dawns on me that the comic book and the landscape portrait are more my own creation than the pastor’s. I mean the pastor may very well hold this worldview. That’s fine. However upon closer reflection, I am adding to the framing and pivoting his worldview against my own. I am imagining the judgement he is directing toward me. I am likely over exaggerating the density of his solid lines. Does he really believe that God possesses humanoid form in time and space with a crown on his head sitting on some throne in heaven? I don’t think he does. He might even say that he thinks there is a throne and crown and all but I don’t think he utterly believes that. Yet I sit here and take all of these outlandish thoughts and stuff them into his head and develop a character around him that is not really him.

So yesterday in between my viewings of this sermon, I resolve myself to be open to the words I hear over the remainder of the sermon. I let those lines go soft. I listen from a hollowed place outside of time and space and try to just let the message wash over me. This has become a sort of repeating pattern of my sermon listening over the past year. I get tripped up on something said. I grow stiff and guarded. I let go of my inner drama and re-enter into the sermon as liturgical mystery and it all becomes good again.

Last night he enters into this theme of God as “even more.” This totally aligns with how I envision God. The three-tier landscape transforms to an inviting mist. I am thinking, or “not-thinking”, of God as a state of moreness or better yet as the pastor notes “even moreness.” God is always even more. We continually receive more and realize there is even more. In this way God is ever expansive like the universe we live in.

This thought resonates with me today in this water. With the refreshing temperature of the ocean, the bright sun and the undulating surface, there is ever more here. The ocean is poised to give and give and give. The radiance of the sun is infinite. Sure, tomorrow morning may bring a completely overcast sky but right here and right now in this moment those clouds don’t exist.

I find myself thinking of the verse in the gospels, “For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” This verse has always confused me. It sounds like Jesus is saying I’m going to give to those who have been lucky enough in life to have abundance and to the less fortunate, I’ll take away what little they have. That sure seems contrary to “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and the rest of the beatitudes.

Somehow the verse makes new sense right now. I feel as I open my heart to the even moreness of God, I am in a place to receive more. I think that is what faith is and maybe that is why Jesus places faith as the ticket of entry to the kingdom of God - the home of even more and then even more and so on. There are absolutely times when I feel cut off from the moreness and when my world feels like it is closing in on me. When I am in that head space, it feels like even what I have is being taken away.

Here in this water in this sun what else is there but even more?

Well I will tell you what there is less of. Big Bob. Big Bob appears to be gone. When I get to the northern bathrooms I look and I look and I look and can find that buoy nowhere. I wonder if he stole yet another kayaker paddle and they had to put him down. I may never know.

I head back to where I started and finish the swim. I walk up the stairs and just soak in what I have left of being here.

I know some will emphatically proclaim that these stairs have a quality of even moreness to them. I don’t think most think of that as a good thing in stairs but for me, here, today, it is very good.