The Chasm and the Box

Left the house at about 10:15 this morning and it was a beautiful and warm sunny Friday. I’m wondering what the water temperature is going to be today. It could honestly be anything. We had more West winds since my last swim so it could actually be colder. However we are also in the beginning of a heat wave and maybe things have recovered. The latest water temperature forecast says things could get back in the 70s by the end of the weekend.

I arrive at the parking lot and the day continues to shine. The ocean surface looks smooth and the air is still. The funicular is still closed - as it has been since the July 4th holiday. I saw the it running up the track on Tuesday. Maybe it just gets restless and needs to stretch every now and then.

Surf looks small but there is supposed to be a minor swell building. We may just be in between sets right now. As I begin the swim, the water feels very similar to Tuesday - pretty darn cold for early September. However it gets a touch warmer once I breach the surf line. The fluctuations between warm and cold are extreme today. There are a couple patches where it feels like I must be swimming in close proximity to a block of ice and then it suddenly feels like a dip in the hot tub. I really am surprised at how warm some of these spots feel. I also notice if I stop swimming and take on a more upright position, the deeper water below my waist feels much colder that the water at my upper torso. Both today and Tuesday it seems like there is considerably less seaweed floating around in the water.

I’m swimming (I mean that’s why I came here) and I am thinking about this YouTube video I saw just before I left the house. It was from a Q&A of Wim Hof. I love Wim Hof. I’ve read two of his books and have seen and heard him in lots of interviews. He is definitely cooky and eccentric and that’s partly why I like him. He does not take himself too seriously and he is super passionate about spirituality, cold water therapy, and breath work and helping others through the practices he has developed. His eccentricity reveals an unconflicted authenticity that I admire.

Anyways the question posed to him in this video is “Do I believe in God.” He gives a somewhat typical New Age answer. Something like “I believe in divinity and it is all about love and the different religions of the world should be loving one another and not fighting one another.” I like his answer and I can feel his heartfelt sincerity in the response. But then I have this inner evangelical chiming in, “He didn’t confess Jesus Christ. He is lost and a false teacher. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Oh how Satan fools us!”

I’m absolutely on the New Age side of the fence here, but the evangelical voice got implanted into my DNA as a child and continues to be fed by the culture I move in. So I feel the tug of that voice and a compulsion to either believe it or scramble to defend Wim Hof and every word I use in my defense is magically diffused by these crazy arguments wrapped in random scripture citations becoming an annoying din that grows louder and louder until I just want to push it all out of my head.

I overlay these thoughts with the remembrance of Sunday’s communion experience which has been on my heart all week long. The ceremony began with a battle between my heart and mind over all the typical Christian symbolic language around this sacrament - the body and the blood, atonement, human sacrifice, wages of sin, etc. etc. These symbols seem to form a barricade between my heart and the spiritual freedom and release I am asked to receive. They become pieces that assemble some sort of crazy cartoon that I am supposed to look at as though it is live action.

Then I let go.

I accept an invitation to fall into this chasm of belief. I fall and I fall and I fall. I release my doubt and I believe and suddenly that bread and grape juice transmute into flesh and blood as deliverance and grace.

Do those feelings and my consent to plunge into that chasm represent tacit agreement with this evangelical voice? No I don’t think so. Below the ledge of this chasm sings a very different voice. The evangelical voice (and to be clear I am talking about my own very special evangelical which may differ from your special evangelical) is stuffed in a box. This box actually provided me with a lot of security, structure and certainty about the world I walked in when I was younger. It’s a lovely box until you notice it’s a box. There are things meant to remain inside the box and things to remain on the outside. What is in the box is good, but beware of what is outside the box. Things get confusing real quick when you notice that stuff outside of the box might not be evil and feel like they belong and seem like you might be missing out on a whole lot if you stay inside the box. Also weird, there are a lot of boxes. Others outside the box have their own boxes and they remain inside their box. Some of their furnishings are very similar to your box. Who has the right box? They sure seem just as convinced that their box is the better box.

So eventually you might say, “fuck these boxes.” This whole box is full of a load of crap. I’m getting out of the box. You meet other people who have left their boxes as well. Everyone claims to be the better for it. You realize these are good people making solid spiritual contributions and things feel right hanging around them. In my case a lot of these people were Buddhists but some were atheists for sure. Oh, one of them is Wim Hof.

Decades later you may come to notice that old box again. You may see there is some darn good stuff in that box. A lot of what is in that old box feels like home and feels connected to your secret heart. Then suddenly it dawns on you that you can return to many of these things…unbounded. The box was full of talismans always wanting to lead you to something ultimately transcending any box.

This is where I stand. Leaving the box and standing at the edge of a chasm. If I am quiet, I hear a wind that moves like a river far below the edge. Falling is the only way. It feels like a sort of suicide, but it activates a set of wings we have possessed all along. Faith is the mechanism behind the fall. It’s like reading a poem and ceasing to analyze it like a scientific journal. You believe every word and stanza and you stop fighting with the meaning that may or may not lie behind those words. The meaning just cannot be articulated. Here the symbols become everything they were meant to be in the first place. A hand drawing us into the ineffable.