I left the house a little after 6. The weather is mild and overcast.

After parking at the Strand, I start with a 7.5 mile run through the harbor. I make a point of running by what was once the Harbor Grill restaurant because I was curious if something new might be moving into this spot. Man, what a great restaurant the Harbor Grill was. It was too pricey for me to go regularly but the fish was just so good. I first started eating here back when I used to live with my parents almost 40 years ago. I have so many fond memories of good times with family and great food. There does not look to be any sign of something new moving in. It looks just like an empty shell of what used to be a restaurant.

I get back to my car and change into my swim trunks. Today I plan to leave my pack in my car and just head down to the water with my goggles and camera. The water and air conditions are well above hypothermic at last and given the rock situation yesterday, I don’t feel like scrambling to fetch my pack.

It’s a couple hours past low tide but it is still plenty low. When I get to the beach, the rocks are still piled up against the bluff but there is lots of sand below to walk on.

The swell has really come down. It is now just small leftovers.

As I make my way out in the shallow water I feel and then see a fish swoosh by my ankles. At first I assume it is a sand shark. I’m really not sure if Sand Shark is the correct term but that is what I have called them since I was a kid. It’s a large (18 inches long) clear fish that hangs out in the shallow water in the summer. The water is pretty clear here and as the bubbles from the whitewater dissipates, I see three decent sized Leopard Sharks about 2.5 to 3 feet long. They look super cool and they are harmless. I’m not able to get a picture of one because they are fast and the breaking waves keep obscuring my view.

I dive under water and swim around a bit to see if I can find them again but no luck.

I begin the journey south and very soon realize that my arms are super tired. They just feel fatigued and a little tender. I’m not sure why. This is just my second day in a row swimming. I’m thinking that I am going to have to deal with this for the next hour because of course I’m not going to abort early.

I try to focus on the fatigue and pain and enter into the sensation with curiosity. I let myself settle into the discomfort and breathe with it. This gets me through the entire swim. I just keep swimming and one minute I’m here and before you know it I am there and a little bit more and I am further.

The water feels good as it has all month. Oh sweet May! Surfline bumped the water temp from 62 to 63 yesterday. Every degree counts. It’s still below average for this time of year but I must have adapted more because I remember complaining last May whereas now I feel like I’d b content if it stayed like this all year.

There is more and more seaweed accumulating on the water. I love to pass through this and feel the grass and vines brush against me. Sometimes as I pass through a thick patch of grass, I swear it traps the heat and I can feel warmth in the brush.

Visibility is mediocre and I can see lots of kelp stalks but can’t get a view of the floor.

Eventually I wrap up the swim and I am pretty exhausted.

In just the one hour that I have been swimming, the water is now up to the rocks on most of the beach and there is far less shore than when I started.

I clean up, grab my coffee at the Starbucks on PCH and Crown Valley and then head to church in Laguna. Oh this coffee…so good. So what if Starbucks is not the best coffee, it is still good coffee which is way better than bad coffee.

I listen to my yoga and Sikh chanting music all the way to church. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that I am the only member of my church that listens to this. But who knows?! There is probably someone else listening to this genre and thinking the exact same thing.

Church is pretty great today. The highlight was just as it was getting started and someone in the small (30ish?) congregation said they wanted to say something. Now at my church, this could make things interesting. About a third of the church is homeless and some have mental health issues. It is not uncommon for someone to start yelling profanities in the middle of the service. I find this super uncomfortable but I also love it so much. It makes me feel good that these sort of things can happen and our church doesn’t freak out. The same guy that said to the pastor, “Fuck you Don! You're full of shit!” as he stormed out is more than welcome to come back next week. Don just smiled at him as he left and told him he loved him. There have been occurrences where individuals were asked not to come back but it is rare from what I can tell.

So this individual who said he had something to say comes to the front of the church and talks about how he felt the Holy Spirit when he was in the hospital (so far so good) and then mentions how he sensed his guardian angel (okay, that’s cool) and then says his guardian angel is Todd Adams. He didn’t actually say Todd Adams. I don’t remember the name but it was a normal name and not Gabriel or Michael or the usual angelic cast. You could feel ever so slightly an uncomfortable pause. I think the default evangelical response to this would be to call it witchcraft or sorcery.

I just loved this for various reasons. First I could care less about the doctrinal correctness of believing in a guardian angel who may be an incarnation of a dead human. I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that maybe this person once knew a Todd Adams? I just don’t think the correctness matters. He believes it and it clearly helps him and he probably needed all the help he could get in the hospital. Who can put any kind of label on the mystery that transpires in the liminal pockets that hover just underneath our shared conventional perception with any kind of accuracy? Angels? Spirit guides? Who cares what you call them? I’m pretty sure they don’t. I just loved the purity and innocence of this individuals account of his own experience.

The other thing that was great is that the whole church applauded as if this doctrinal guffaw never happened and several gave him fist bumps as he walked back down the aisle to his seat. I think that’s what Jesus would have done. No good could come about by telling him, “you know, humans are not angelic and to communicate with the spirit of a deceased human is Satanic. That guardian angel is no guardian angel but a big lie.”

Then there was the sermon on baptism. The pastor had such genuine enthusiasm and talked about several of his personal experiences that gave him hope and helped him along through difficult times. It was so pure and open hearted and honest and I think the world only needs more of that. Sure, he might have used some churchy language that sounded weird to me. There was talk of being washed by blood and what not and I’m sure he was not being poetic. However, just like the gentleman talking about his guardian angel, how can I nit pic the words used here to describe a strongly energetic and dynamic catharsis in this man’s life?

I’m just swimming through the sea grass here as I sit in this church. I’m feeling the warmth radiate off this organic matter and enjoying the sensation as my fingers become entwined with the leaves as they penetrate the water and then feel that leaf brush under my feet a couple seconds later.

That’s all that matters - this experience of what is occuring in each moment before me. How I parse it…how I categorize the words and place them into the good and the bad buckets…whatever.