Well how’s that for a title?! Bear with me here.

The overcast skies cleared up pretty quickly today. I left the house for a 6 mile run at about 7:45 and it was very nice out already. I ran through Doheny to Lantern Bay park just as “Yoga in the park” and the dog training lessons were beginning. It definitely looked like some of these dogs could use some training. Maybe some yoga would do them good, but I think it could be a struggle to make it through Savasana (corpse pose). I headed back home via “downtown” capo beach.

I left for the beach at about 9:30. The water looked super smooth from the parking lot and it was just such a beautiful morning - sunny and warm.

Several folks running up and down the stairs for their morning workout.

When I get to the water it feels pleasant on my feet. The water feels a bit warmer today that it did yesterday. The Salt Creek lifeguard tower posts a 70 degree water temperature. That’s the stuff dreams are made of.

Surf is down a notch from yesterday. When I woke up this morning, the Strands surf report was a meager 1-2 feet which climbed to 2-3 later in the morning. Definitely looking very calm and smooth. I can tell this is going to be a lovely swim.

I make my way out past what little surf there is and the water just feels so great. I head South and settle in to my stroke.

Today as I swim I’m thinking of Jesus or more precisely the phrase “in Christ Jesus.” It’s a phrase found in many of the letters attributed to Paul in the New Testament. There are about 5 bible passages that I recite to myself every morning: Romans 6:23, Isaiah 40:31, Numbers 11:21-23, Genesis 18:13-14, and Exodus 14:14. I recite them silently to myself with my eyes closed. Some I recite several times, as many times necessary until I feel a sensation of opening inside myself. Yesterday as I was reciting Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” I found myself weeping. I had just gotten off the phone with my mom and we were talking bout some sensitive family topics. The key phrase that cuts to my heart in this verse is simply “in Christ Jesus.” That very name is like a portal that carries me across an expanse into a place where there is no separation with God. To enter in Christ Jesus is like a chemical reaction transforming matter from one state into another. The catalyst of this reaction is love - complete and unconditional acceptance. I am thinking of the suffering and the walls that exist between family members and God and between myself and God. We drift to a sort of death and all the while the free gift is there.

Until fairly recently, this verse used to drive me nuts. It really was not until just a few months ago that somehow the words shifted and took on an entirely different energy for me. The verse is such the cliché Christian slogan. “The wages of sin is death.” As I used to read or hear this I would basically hear, “We are each a piece of shit and if we continue to wallow in our selfishness and habits of self pleasure then we are gonna get what’s coming - death. Not only death but a sort of awful death after death - endless suffering and torment. Afterall we broke this contract that some entity came up with. A cosmic law etched into the framework of the universe. Only if we acknowledge the occurrence of this crazy historical event, the resurrection, then we get this free gift to live forever and ever in some celestial blissful place. But I mean, is this really free? All in all, this just doesn’t sound like “good news.” These cards don’t seem stacked up quite right. Living forever? Uhh…I guess that’s great and all but the terms just feel a little shifty.

This interpretation dominates my thoughts when I focus on the words and rhetoric of “wages,” “law,” “ransom,” “blood,” and lots of other trigger words for me in the New Testament epistles that are overlayed with memories of sermons from my childhood and early adulthood with these under tones of fear and judgement.

However, in the last few years as I have been reading the bible again after dismissing it for 30 years, I read this verse and others that speak of our existence “in Christ Jesus” and I feel a warmth. I feel love. I feel an invitation and not a proclamation of consequences. I have gradually been able to peek behind the words. The words are just words and it is the energy behind them that carries the real and ineffable message. There is a poetry here that I think we are being called to embrace.

I read this verse now and I hear, “you are not a piece of shit.” You never were. What do I have to do to prove this to you? What do I have to do to show you that you are already free. Always were free but imprisoned by your false beliefs. Let me give you a new set of beliefs that will save you from your misperceptions of yourselves. Let me be the most ultimate act of love one can give to another. I will lay down my life for you. This might sound kind of weird to my modern mind that someone has to die, but at the time and in the context of Jesus’s culture, it was the perfect act of absolution. What genius is this that an act of utter weakness and self-sacrifice becomes the quintessential symbol of the Christian tradition.

“The wages of sin is death?” I no longer see it as vindictive judgement. It’s simply stating that many of our thought patterns and life choices lead us into a living hell. There is a different way of thinking and navigating our lives that offers an eternal existence. I see this “eternal” as a synonym for “full,” “connected,” and “vibrant.” In my Christian tradition this is “in Christ Jesus.” While I personally believe that Jesus was a historical figure who embodied the divine and rose from the dead. I also see Jesus as an energy or frequency of spiritual alignment that is not limited to that one incarnation. I think that same energy may show up in Krishna, Quan Yin, the Higher Power of the 12 step movement, or even the beauty of math and science in nature. Many may find that heretical. Whatever. If my theology holds out a salvation that can be forfeited if I don’t get the facts straight then I think we are all screwed.

So I am swimming and find myself repeating the words “in Christ Jesus” and exploring where that takes me. Right now it finds me in this water. In this ocean that is teaming with energy and life.