Rip Tide

A big north-west swell has rolled into the islands today. I had been watching the Lahaina surf report oved the past couple weeks and it has been predicting minimal surf for the foreseeable future. So when this swell started making the news yesterday I wondered what was up. Well it seems obvious now but of course the island of Maui is made up of two circles. Even though Lahaina is only 10 miles from where I am, it faces a completely different direction and will not respond to this swell.

This morning I notice the sound of the surf is louder than it has been.

I take a run before the sun comes up along the Mahana Ridge trail. I just run 3 miles out and then back. It was a nice run with some good inclines.

My dad and I went to church just 5 minutes from our condo. I’ve been stuck in this pattern the last two weeks where church mostly annoys me and I’m annoyed that it annoys me. The worship singing I super enjoy but then the message makes me…I don’t know…I guess annoyed is the best word I can come up with. It’s like a bunch of the words mostly have a good message but I suppose it is the world view from where they come feel completely alien to me.

Last week my church that I go to in Laguna Beach was talking about “the gospel.” Many things were said that I did not see eye to eye with. That is fine. I have pretty much opted out of seeing eye to eye with everything preached. What bothered me most was that the pastor was calling out people who had more liberal and progressive beliefs like myself and emphasizing how wrong that is. One phrase stuck with me, “If you have the fall wrong, you have it all wrong.” The “fall” meaning the fall of man into sin where they need salvation through Jesus. I definitely see “the fall” differently from what was being spoken so much so that I’m not sure I would even call it a fall.

I’m super sensitive to this message and questioning, “do I have it all wrong?” No I don’t think I do but that evangelical part of my DNA starts to tell me what a heretic I am for believing differently from the evangelical status quo. And it is effortless for me to believe this inner dialog.

Then today’s sermon was much more innocuous and at its heart a very good message. But I can smell the evangelicalism in the room. I can feel the undercurrent of “we are saved” and the others who believe differently need saving. And this just bothers me. It’s like we are all reading from the same book and I am getting something totally different. Yet who am I to say that my interpretation is more correct. I read this book (aka bible) and it unfolds itself before me as a mysterious puzzle. The working of the puzzle leads to wonder but not to solutions. I mean maybe there are some solutions but there are several and some contradict each other and none are one size fits all.

As I struggle with this I wonder how much of this is just my own internal battle. Is this just my current church experience triggering old emotional reactions? How much am I projecting onto the speaker of the sermon? And why can’t I just let it be? I know we are never going to agree. I want to let it be and let it go. I want to move forward on my own path. I want to let my path be my path and not be bothered by the opposing opinions and views of others.

Welp. I don’t see this struggle ending any time soon so might as well settle in and make myself comfortable.

Later after church I take a walk and look at the large surf in the local area. Man these beaches that were so calm yesterday are now teaming with energy. I really don’t feel comfortable swimming out anywhere here except maybe in the in-shore area of Kapalua Bay that looks pretty well protected.

My dad and I take a drive out to Honolua Bay which is close by and a fairly well known good surf spot. We watch the surfers here take off on these 15 feet waves. It is pretty fun ot watch them drop into super steep barrels. I see a couple miss and wipe out over the falls. Ouch.

We drive back and checkout the coast just south of Napilli where I had seen what looked like large waves from a distance on my walk earlier. We find a shore access point that is this super rustic and overgrown path. It is worth the walk just for this path. There are some good sized waves here but no surfers because there does not look like any place to enter the surf.

We head back to the condo and after a while I decide to make the trip back to Kapalua where things looked protected. When I get there, I spend a good deal of time watching the area and mapping out what I think is the safest area to swim in. I realize this is not going to be much of a swim since the area is so small, but I do want to get wet.

I head to the water and start swimming out. No one else is swimming out here. The water is super cloudy and you can barely see a thing. I eventually get to the boundary of where I feel comfortable and start to swim back inland. It feels like I am swimming in place. After a bit I realize I am stuck in a rip current and I am not going anywhere. I experience some brief feelings of “concern.” I start to vear in a more diagonal direction to avoid the power of the rip and to move further into the more protected area of the bay. Eventually I sense that I am progressing toward shore and then before long I am just about back to the sand.

Well that will be enough of that for now.

I grab my shirt and phone and a woman tells me she was watching my head the whole time and hoping I was ok. I assure her I am. Then I meet two other women on the lawn above the beach and they say they were watching me the whole time like two worried mothers. We talked for a while and they were super nice.

The fact is that the surf in this bay was small but it was super tumultuous. On calm days there is zero surf here and most of the tourists here simply don’t know their way around any kind of surf. That all said, I won’t attempt this again in these conditions. I’m just not familiar with this place like I am at The Strand in Dana Point. With the shallow choral reef and the unfamiliar currents, it’s best to stick to the calm days.

Somehow this rip tide strikes me as a metaphor for my experience with church. I get caught up in this struggle of opposing views and my instinct is to resist in the opposite direction. I find myself really making no progress and I have to change to a course that may not be a direct line to where I want to go but somehow gets me to where I need to be.