Feels Like a Miracle

My achilles is definitely better but I still don’t feel up for a full run. I instead run about a mile to the gym and work the elliptical machine for 50 minutes. Ugh. I don’t really find it boring anymore for some reason but I always do the “random hill” workout on 18 intensity (20 is the max) and some of the hills are like torture. I know I have mentioned before that when I am swimming in cold water, I often ask myself if I am suffering and usually find that I am not. There is challenge and intensity and I would even say some unpleasantness at times but not suffering.

Now when I am on the steepest grade hill on the elliptical towards the middle or end of the session and I ask myself the same question: am I suffering? The answer is an emphatic YES! I am suffering! I try to find this space that is in the last several milliseconds of my exhale. I place all of my concentration on that point and it somehow gets me over the hill. I exert much effort into not making unnatural sounding squealing noises or overly exaggerated facial contortions so I don’t freak out others in the gym.

By the time I am done and eventually ready to head out to the beach at about 9:15, it is still overcast out. I see a few splotchy holes with some blue sky peeking through and I wonder if things might at least burn off over the coarse of the swim.

When I get to Camino Las Ramblas which turns into PCH, I see a clearing sky as I look inland into the San Juan hills but looking west to the coast looks pretty darn socked in.

When I get to the parking lot, my optimism of a sunny ending to the swim is plummeting. Oh well, I have had some great summery swims this week, it’s time for a change. I’m pretty sure the water will be nice.

It is indeed pleasant out and in the mid 60s. When I get to the stairs, there is a sign warning people about aggressive Seals and Sea Lions. It says the last sighting was on the 28th, 3 days ago. I see a surfer behind me look at the sign and then turn around and walk back to the cars.

This doesn’t stop all the surfers. There is a small group out there. However, today is probably the flattest I have seen the waves in a couple weeks. Not much here to surf, but I hear Monday and Tuesday is expecting a south swell.

It’s a mid tide and despite the clouds, there are quite a few people here on the beach. Well, it is the fourth of July weekend and I’m sure the sun will show itself eventually.

The water does feel nice on my feet and I wade out to my waist and then start swimming. It is definitely bumpier today than it has been all week. Not super choppy but enough to add some extra invigoration to the swim.

I head south and just settle into the motion of moving my arms and legs to propel me forward. It’s something that I don’t even really need to think about it seems. The water feels a little cool but warm enough not to cause any distraction.

I think of this movie I watched last night: Salt and Light - a documentary about the Salt Company which was a Christian band and coffee house in North Hollywood during the Jesus movement of the late sixties and early seventies. It was one of those icons of the movement up there with Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. I have this strong fascination with that era. I find it interesting how these hippies looking for freedom from the establishment and a sense of spiritual meaning found both in the message of Jesus.

I find it equally fascinating how this same group of people grew up and then became largely evangelical and very much apart of the establishment. They ask themselves if the Jesus Movement can happen again today. This was one of the largest revival movements in history. I don’t know. I have this feeling that the next revival of that kind of significance might not look like the kind of revival the people who are asking this question would want.

There was a point in this documentary where a woman was describing her experience of first coming to the North Hollywood Presbyterian church that hosted the Salt Company. She was broken and homeless. She was looking for the largest church in the area so that she could hide and not have to get to know people. She sat through the sermon and asked to speak with the pastor afterwards. She sobs because she had never been presented with this kind of image of God as benign and accepting. That God could forgive her of the things she had done wrong in her young life overwhelmed her with emotion.

As I listen to her story I find myself getting choked up. As usual when this happens to me hearing and watching Jesus stories, I really don’t know why I am so affected. I can’t finish the sentence “I am crying because…” I just find myself connecting to this state of grace and love the woman is describing.

Since my church has been going through the book of Romans, I have been reading it lately. It is challenging for me to connect with the first couple chapters. The way Paul talks about sin and how it was brought into the world through Adam and Eve and the need for a blood atonement does not resonate with me. I feel like it is not my story. It is Paul’s story. It is the story of a people that lived in a different culture and time. As I read Romans, I need to read it with my heart and not so much my mind. I feel like there is something beneath the talk of sin and wrath and atonement that connects with Paul and that he can only articulate using the spiritual language of his time. There is a base line of grace and love that flows below the melody of sin, judgement and justification.

As I hear this woman speak of breaking down in that church, I can only think, “I believe in THAT.” I don’t know about the literal readings of all the Christian jargon around blood and redemption. That all looks like a big cartoon or comic book based movie to me. It doesn’t feel real. There are times when it is hard for me to get my head around the historical Jesus and the act of the divine becoming flesh. This all lies so far from my daily experience of life. I live day by day by day by day and everyone is filled with unsurprising events.

But this broken woman crying in church feels real and reading Romans with my heart and listening to the base lines below the text - those notes feel real. The story of Christ feels real. The existence of forgiveness and grace and love in the universe feels real and it feels like the closest thing to a miracle I have encountered.