I leave the house a little before 6:30 this morning. It is completely overcast but the temperature is pleasant. For the past several days, the sun has been coming out between 10 and 11 and the days have been pretty warm. Unfortunately I can’t wait that long today. If I want to get in the water, it’s gotta be now.

I very much want to get in the water.

It’s pretty subdued out as I drive to the beach. I see a pack of surfers waiting for waves at Doheny. Earlier this week (Thursday), there were some pretty good sets rolling in and big by Doheny standards.

It’s a pretty empty parking lot here at the Strand. I shed my shirt and shoes and grab my goggles and camera and head for the stairs. It’s nice out - not too cold even without a shirt. There is a lone runner going up and down the stairs.

When I get a view of the beach, the tide is low and surf is present but nothing special. There is a body boarder in the water near my take off point. I watch him catch a couple fun rides.

I head out into the water and soon start swimming. A wave breaks in front of me and I dive under. It seems like it has been several swims since I have had to dive under a wave, which is unusual, and I enjoy it.

Ok. The water is nice. It is definitely up another notch over my previous swims. As I was checking the buoy data this morning, the numbers were up yesterday peaking at 68 in the late afternoon and early evening hours.

The ocean surface is fairly smooth but there is absolutely activity in the water. There are a couple swells at play this morning: a S-SSE swell and a NW swell. The entire swim has quite a bit of wobble. I can feel both push and pull as I swim both up and down the beach.

Last night I watched this documentary about Mr. Rogers on Netflix. I was drawn to this movie not only because I grew up with Mr. Rogers on TV and find him incredibly endearing and fascinating but I wanted to watch something that could present faith and spirituality in a way that feels real.

Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. I don’t think I ever heard him talk about Jesus or God yet he carried himself and presented a message to children that was nothing short of Christ like. When I imagine how Jesus may have interacted and communicated with children, it pretty much looks like Mr. Rogers to me.

Many in the Christian world might criticize his silence on the story of Jesus and sin and blah blah blah. Religion and church seem so obsessed with what feels to me like super hero action figures and topics that appear as though they belong in the genre of fantasy novels. Heaven and hell, repentance and atonement, wrath and judgement - we are told these are front and center to our very existence and yet they feel like byproducts of an ancient world view.

Mr. Rogers just didn’t give any lip service to this stuff. He was just concerned about improving the lives of children and put his efforts into presenting the most effective message he could in order to give them a better view of themselves and how to navigate the sometimes troubling world around them. Isn’t that the whole point of spirituality?

I don’t think that the supernatural references present in religion, any religion, are non sensical. I feel like there is something utterly real lying underneath those references and the fantastical symbols invite our attention to gaze in their direction because the truth beneath them truly is fantastical. Love and grace and mercy are fantastical and evade any solid surface we can feel or touch. So is evil and suffering for that matter.

I hear so many sermons and Christian speakers who possess a tone that suggests that we need look no deeper than the references themselves and in fact maybe it is best that we don’t. Afterall, our eternal destiny is on the line. In the end, so much effort is about “saving souls” and getting them to heaven.

The bible becomes this guide book on how to find the buried treasure. I totally get the mindset that reads the bible plainly and literally. That’s the way our society has been taught to approach scripture. However, Jesus was clear about his lack of clarity. Much of his teachings were intentionally shrouded in story. His disciples were always guessing at what he was talking about and getting it wrong. They were reading the surface and Jesus was trying to point to something deeper. Yet we are to believe that everything he said about heaven and hell (which really wasn’t much) was precisely as it is.

How about the book of Revelations? It does not claim to be allegorical, but the symbolism is so dense no one will argue that it is saturated in metaphor. Yet all the parts about heaven, hell and “end times” are to be interpreted plainly? Also, go and read that book and tell me how “plain” any interpretation could possibly be.

There is a comment that I often hear from biblical literalists criticizing the views of more liberally minded folk who do not take the bible to be inerrant. That comment goes: they are “picking and choosing” the parts of scripture they like and rejecting what “feels” unpleasant or what they just don’t like. I don’t know. I think we are all picking and choosing. I think we all must pick and choose. I think the inerrantists pick and choose what they think is metaphorical and what is literal. On the one hand I think that is fine and inevitable and how can I judge because I am doing the same. On the other hand, they appoint themselves the absolute authority on which is which.

This idea of scripture as literal and unchanging truth reminds me of a local mega church that made the news recently because they are being kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for ordaining women teaching pastors. The founder of this church is pretty famous and clearly believes the bible is God breathed and without error. However, this is actually one teaching where a few passages attributed to Paul seem unambiguous. I think it is great that this church is allowing women to speak. When I look at our world today and look at what women do in all fields of academia, politics, and business, the teaching that women should keep silent and not be put in authority over a man just does not comply with today’s reality. I don’t think you can hold to a view that eliminates women from leadership and not look ridiculous. The church I attend fortunately holds this same view.

Sexuality is another topic mired in biblical judgement and seems like it is constantly coming up in my church and my news feeds. Like women teaching and holding authority, the bible contains several passages that seem pretty clear that homosexuality is wrong. Again, this just does not merge with the world I see. I think folks hold to this belief because they think homosexuality is disgusting. Most who hold this view probably don’t know any homosexuals and it is easy to paint a picture in their heads of an ultra hedonistic, almost bacchanalian, lifestyle that surely all homosexuals lead when in fact they are usually normal people going about their lives like anyone else. Like heterosexuals who can’t imagine the thought of sexual intimacy with the same sex, homosexuals do not feel like they can flip the switch and start feeling attracted to the opposite sex. The condemnation the church imparts can be unspeakably hurtful for homosexual Christians.

A popular conservative argument I hear is that God made sex to be a union between a man and a women and this is revealed in biology itself. I heard in a recent sermon at my church that this sin is more egregious than others because it is a lifestyle contradicting God’s plan for our lives. So does that mean humanity’s aspirations for flight and space travel are also sinful? Would not God given us wings if we were meant to fly? Am I in a state of sin right now in this water where I am in no way biologically configured to live? When I look at nature I do not see black and white and straight lines. I see variations of all kinds.

I know I got on to this topic with the contrast of metaphor vs. literal interpretation of religious imagery. Issues of gender and sexuality are different. They are not like heaven and hell messages talking of a reality which we do not directly experience. However this contrast makes me think of these more down to earth issues because they point to ways in which a literal reading of scripture as unchangeable truth just seem to be out of step with the world I see in front of me. And I find it disturbing because it depicts a theology that feels distant and far away and sometimes even sinister.

Back to Mr. Rogers. When I hear about the life and message of Fred Rogers, it gives me hope in the motivations nurtured by a life of faith. It gives me hope that faith can lead us to act in ways that raise the quality of all life. I don’t know if Fred wrestled with these kind of observations of the church and biblical interpretation. I can’t imagine that he didn’t, but he chose not to make it a focal point of his ministry. I find this truly inspiring because I get personally distracted, confused, and generally agitated while over-thinking these concepts. I don’t want to get stuck in the circular thinking about what is real and what is false. I also want to be able to embrace the spiritual imagery woven into my spiritual lineage in a way that draws me closer to the ineffable things those symbols point to.

I get all in a internal kerfuffle debating who the historical Jesus was. Was he “divine?” Did he rise from the dead? Did he say and do all the things said in the bible? My answers to these questions depend on the time of day and the current barometric pressure. There is also this subconscious dynamic underneath of good boy/bad boy involved where I feel like the old man in the sky is upset with me if I don’t take the right things literally enough as though disbelief resembles some breach of covenant. I know deep down that is ridiculous but I also know that sentiment is etched into much of our societal psyche. I have to believe these arguments are a total distraction and do not help us raise the bar of humanity.

I have to believe that if heaven and hell and eternal salvation and damnation are as important as we are led to believe or if gender and homosexuality were truly as volatile as the arguments being had over these topics today, and if scripture is intended to communicate the final authority on all of this, then these topics would have been a much more predominant theme throughout scripture.

So I swim here and I watch the horizon, I see the kelp floating in front of my face. I see the birds flying above and I see the bluff against the shore. These are things that are all around me. They surround me. They are irrefutably present. I swim here and place my intent on opening my heart to the energy in the water that holds me here. No I don’t see that but I know without any doubt that it exists. I don’t know its exact shape or texture and I don’t need to. As I lift my head out of the water and breath this salty air, I have to believe that this is all that I need for salvation. Salvation rests in front of us in the background, foreground and liminal spaces where we walk, where we look, where we breath and where we feel. In the end I feel like this is all I can surmise and conclude with any kind of certainty.