Another early weekday swim. My first meeting today is not until 9 AM and so I can fit in a swim first if I can get out of here quick.

I’m out the door at 6:15 and off toward the horizon I see some blue sky! With the exception of Wednesday afternoon, I have not seen blue sky for over a week. What I see now is not just a hole here and there but a significant stretch of sky that looks to be located over the water. Nice!

I get to the parking lot and the water looks pretty bumpy. There is not much breeze to speak of. This is probably leftover movement from last night’s onshores.

The sky is 90-95% overcast but there is a slice along the southern horizon of blue sky. You can see another bank of clouds on the other side of Catalina. The sun looks to be directly hitting the edge of that making for a dramatic and beautiful westward view this morning.

Things are quiet with the exception of a gentleman walking down the stairs while holding a lively conversation that is only partially coherent. It’s difficult these days to tell if someone is talking to themself or on the phone. I guess “these days” being any time after 1998. I sense there is no phone at play here.

Coming down the ramp I can see a Seal swimming just in front of the Strands lifeguard hut. I know it’s not a dolphin because I see no fin. I see its head for a couple seconds then it disappears for several more and there it is again another 20 feet south.

I get to the beach and the tide is on the low side. Things still seem off here. It’s under two feet and the water comes all the way up to the ramp but looking north, there is lots of shore. As I predicted on Tuesday, the slope of small rocks along the eastern edge of the beach is now gone and the sand comes right up to the boulders. However, there are lots of these smaller rocks interspersed among the larger boulders like some kind of extra chunky mortar.

I see several fresh Velella Velella on the sand. I find these little jellyfish-like things so cool and odd looking. I wonder how much longer they will be hanging around. According to one report I read, our coasts have not seen them for several years but they have been a frequent fixture here for a couple months now.

I set down my pack and head to the water. At this hour, dunking in the ocean water seems kind of wrong. I was comfy, dry and clothed. Why ruin a good thing? However after my first dive under an oncoming wave, I am surprised to find how comfortable it is out here. Is it a surprise if you fully expect to be surprised?

I make my way south. The water is pretty cloudy today and it is very bouncy. It’s like swimming the Dana Dips on Selva in the 70s before they smoothed them over.

I’m trying to let go of my thoughts and free my mind from the dramas that crowd me. Memories of the week float through my inner vision. Events and conversations that begin as simply events and conversations but I provide my own lighting and special effects that are cast upon my every experience as a trail of energetic residue from every other event and conversation I have ever had. Usually I can’t separate the residue from what is actually happening. I provide the color and music until the experience before me is chemically altered.

I’m thinking of a conversation I had Tuesday night in a church home group. We were talking of someone I knew and another person in the group asked me if he was “saved.” This just isn’t how I see the world and it feels wrong to put others in this binary set of boxes. It’s the first time I can remember that someone has directly asked me to perform this categorization. I had to pause before responding. I realize that explaining my feelings on the whole “saved/unsaved” perspective is not how I want to spend this time. It is way easier for me to transpose my reality onto his and give him the simple answer according to his view.

I’m thinking of another conversation I had this week. Someone is mentioning how someone else at church was talking about the restaurant “Medieval Times” (where everyone dresses in medieval garb like a mini renaissance fair) and concerned it might be demonic. I briefly comment that I can’t understand why this would be. The response is that well, everything is kind of demonic and we live in a world of spiritual warfare. Again I just don’t see the world like this and I also find this perspective dangerous.

Exacerbating the cognitive dissonance I feel toward the concept of “saved” and “unsaved” and the idea that we are constantly engaged in “spiritual warfare” is the fact that I also do not think these views are 100% bogus. I don’t care what your religious beliefs are - one does not have to look far to find how some seem to walk through life along a genuinely blessed path and others seem utterly lost. I personally seem to walk in and out of both of these states over time. As I pass through each state (the saved or unsaved) each has an eternal quality exclusive of the other. When we are saved, we are utterly and completely saved. When we are unsaved, we were never saved and salvation is nowhere to be found.

Further it can seem like around every corner lies some force that would like us to come closer to the unsaved state. Our society is not optimized towards salvation. We are encouraged to get ahead of the other and to accumulate more than the other. We are surrounded by images that want us to feel bad about who we are and to try and gain something outside of ourselves to make us feel right with the world. It takes continual and conscious effort to “combat” this mindset. Rejecting materialistic ideals can even be perceived as weird or subversive by the mainstream.

So here I am in this water with a seeming whirlwind of images and interpretations of personal experience zooming through my mind. I must find a path forward. I have to embrace all facets of this diamond of human experience. Light is a particle and light is a wave. I can be saved and I can be lost. I have to fight the forces that pull me down and welcome the good, beauty and innocence that exists in everything.

Just for this hour, I want these thoughts that divide my world along some qualitative spectrum to melt into the water. I want silence. When my hand hits the water, I just want my hand to hit the water. When I gaze at the clouds to my north, south, east and west, I just want to see clouds. I want to feel the water and the seaweed against my body and have it just be what it is. And what exactly is it? That’s what I’m talking about! It’s that thought that I want less of. Can I evade the questions that separate this from that. At least while I’m on this beach.

Then there it is! It’s the last five minutes of the swim. I see out the corner of my eye something that looks like another human head. Is it another swimmer? I stop and it is a buoy! I feel such joy. The first buoy to be anchored for the imminent junior lifeguard season. Summer is here. I am saved. Saved by the buoy!

Is it coincidence that the ocean surface has calmed considerably since my swim began? I think not!