I’m getting an early start this morning and I’m out of the house a little before 6:30. It is still dark out but relatively warm this morning. It’s actually about 59 degrees. It is fully overcast.

After parking at the Strand parking lot I start with a 6.5 mile run to the Dana Point harbor. I see a lot of branch and bamboo debris inside the breakwater near the harbor’s exit to the open ocean. This is reminiscent of yesterday’s swim.

As I run up Cove Road that leads from the Ocean Institute up to the Chart House, I can see the Dana Outrigger crew and several of their vessels heading toward Dana Cove and I wonder if I will see them later on my swim.

I get back to the parking lot and quickly change into my trunks and I am heading down the stairs by 8:00. Sure enough there is the outrigger fleet again. They are just barely south of me. I know they will likely be just north of me by the time I hit the water.

I reach the beach (or should I say water) and it is just peaking at a deep 6 feet high tide. I have anticipated this and my plan is to set my pack down on the rocks at the bottom of the asphalt road just above the shore. When I get there I see just a couple feet of shore and wonder if I can scramble to my usual spot. I hop off the lower ramp and onto the small boulders that we call a beach. I get about three feet and a set of small waves comes and it is clear these will eliminate any and all rock/sand surface. Even though they are small, it does not take a lot of water to throw the small rocks on the ground out toward the rocks on the bluff. It becomes clear this route is not a good idea. Then I think, “hey I have my sandals, why don’t I trek above the rocks along the bluff and then scramble down to the water.” That is all well and good right now but I know that after over an hour in 57 degree water, I am NOT going to want to scramble back up. So I am back to plan A.

I plop my pack down just on the other side of the hand rail running along the last few steps that lead to the beach. I walk down the steps and then get into the water and start swimming as quick as I can to avoid the next set of waves.

Of course I soon start to think of the swim back to shore and worry about getting tossed by a wave into the rocks. However I feel pretty good about my chances. It’s easy to float in the water just behind where the wave breaks and time the final push to shore but give me something to worry about and I am game for some quality worrying. I don’t hold back and can make your worst case scenario look like winning the lottery.

Anyways, despite this little mind trip, the water feels super good to me. Having just run, I am pretty heated up and the cold water feels refreshing. Aaaand of course I start to wonder just how long will this refreshment last? When will it all come crashing down? Good God Matt, can we just give it a break and swim the damn swim and enjoy this water?

I begin to settle into the swim. It really is nice here. We don’t have the glorious warmth and sunshine we had yesterday but this cloud cover makes for a very peaceful tone.

When I get to the cliffs that plunge into the water at the southern end, there are quite a few people fishing on the rocks. I often see a couple but there are quite a few more out today.

I turn around and start heading north. I see lots of birds swooping down and flying over the water this morning. While that “refreshing” sensation at the beginning of the swim did evolve into a more raw sensation of cold, I still feel pretty good. I’m not going to have a problem making my way all the way to the bathrooms at the north end of the beach. I manage to do this in what feels like pretty good time too.

Once at my northern turnaround, I can just barely make out the Dana Outrigger folks again to my northwest and I assume they are heading back now. They will end at Baby Beach in the harbor where I often see them when the take off and return on my evening walks in that area. They house the boats right there.

I turn around and make my way back toward the ramp. This leg also goes pretty quickly. The tide has come down just a tad and the final push to shore really is a non-event. Because I am so close to the shower that is by the bathrooms at the base of the stairs, I just walk my pack up, rinse off the salt water and then towel off and put on a shirt and sweatshirt to last me the trip up the stairs until I get to my car and retrieve my street clothes that I wear to church.

It is 9:30 and I am making pretty good time. I change my clothes and pre-order my venti latte from the Starbucks on PCH and Crown Valley. I am made extra happy when I see I have enough “stars” accumulated to earn me a free drink so the latte costs me $0.00. My favorite price!

Church is good however I am reminded that it is best not to make conversation with others until my core heats up. A few times I catch my eyes rolling and getting perplexed or annoyed by something said in the sermon. I try to remind myself that this is a sacred space where language takes on a hallowed nature. So many words and symbols trigger me into this literalistic mindset that I imagine demands of me a certain cartoonish perception of spiritual landscape. I feel like someone is rolling in a doll house or miniature, detailed rendering of heaven, earth and hell with little figurines for God, Jesus, Satan and humanity.

At least in this sermon, I wonder how much if not all of this is just me reacting to the lexicon of my former more fundamentalist self. I hear words like anointing, salvation and other phrases that are generally harmless but put me into a defensive mode. The pastor may have a much more metaphorical meaning in his own head. Or maybe he doesn’t - it doesn’t matter. I can be receptive and let these words pass through a new filter of my present day self. When I do, things go much better.

A month ago I was here listening to a talk about the second coming. Now that is an interesting topic because when evangelicals talk about it it is crystal clear that they are wheeling out the doll house and the miniature 3-d models of the middle-east along with the dungeons and dragons style lake of fire and The Beast. Initially that talk really had me going but lead me to a sort of break through. That evening I felt like I was just so tired of words. Part of me wanted to completely jettison all things Christian, and I kind of did. I didn’t want to hear or think about the second coming, or our “new spiritual bodies,” or the salvation that follows the sinner’s prayer and assures our after life. I didn’t even want to read the bible when I hear (as I did later in that talk) that it’s all about “what the bible says” as though the bible gives us this coherent body of truth that all fits together nice and neatly and if we just read that truth and follow it, everything is clear.

So I’m walking and all I can do is focus on my breath. I can’t trust words. I can’t trust a text. I can’t trust ideas. I can trust my breath. So now that it is just me and my breath and the accoutrements of Christianica are gone, I notice that something is here. I am going to call it Christ. Christ stripped of his dogma. Just Christ. I remember this is the same Christ that I felt drawing me near a couple years ago when I wanted to be baptized. I realize that all these inner dialogs I have over the dogma just get in my way of having an authentic experience of Christ. I don’t want to continually argue how this experience should look like, even if all of these arguments are in my head. I just want to have the experience. If I am going to discuss this with others, I want the discussion to be about my direct experience and not debate why my experience is valid relative to other’s dogma. The validity should never be a question. It is valid - period.

I want to move forward with my experience into something new and original and not remain in the same place having the same arguments over and over and over.