Sinking, swimming or somewhere in-between

  • butterfly-swimmer.jpgI got a chance to swim in a pri­vate swim­ming pool recently, which was a real treat. And with the pool all to myself and no way to be seen, I could feel free to see if I even remem­bered how to do the but­ter­fly. This is a fab­u­lous stroke, and when Olympic swim­mers do it, there’s some­thing joy­ous about see­ing them rise out the water, swing their arms for­ward and then flip the rest of their body back into the water as nim­bly as a dol­phin. I was pleased to find that I can still recall the tricky rhythm that goes into it. But the mus­cles to make it hap­pen for any length of time were gone. And dab­bling in the pool, think­ing about the many peo­ple I know who are try­ing to get by right now, there seemed like a bit of a metaphor in fig­ur­ing out if we’re swim­ming along or not.

    Because of course, we don’t have to swim. We can choose to sink. This choice favors nature and nat­ural laws the most — grav­ity will take its toll on an inert body, and we’ll sim­ply drown. Not many make that choice, but some do.

    Most try not to sink, but how they accom­plish that can make a dif­fer­ence. It takes more mus­cles, more pre­ci­sion and some level of expe­ri­ence or instruc­tion to swim effi­ciently. When I was 11 and learn­ing how to swim the but­ter­fly on swim team, I couldn’t get the rhythm of it down and did my own imi­ta­tion, which con­sisted of splash­ing my arms out and down and kick­ing with my feet at the same time. It was an inel­e­gant solu­tion, but it did actu­ally allow me to get from one side of the pool to the other. Com­pet­ing against the other 11-year-olds, I didn’t fare too badly. And even after I learned how to do the moves in the right order (arms first, kick to pro­pel you out of the water again), I tended to revert back to my pan­icky ver­sion when I’d get tired or when I was falling behind in a race.

    It takes more mus­cles to do things cor­rectly. It takes more intel­li­gence, and it takes more nerve. When you’re lack­ing any of those three, you can do the stroke that just gets you from one side of the pool to the other. I see it in how I do my work for the day (or don’t), how I keep up my spir­i­tual strug­gle (or don’t). Some­times, it takes all I’ve got even to do that. But there’s a law at work, some­thing I sum up by telling myself “If you don’t run the house, the house will run you.” If I let things go, cut every cor­ner, say shorter prayers, eat what­ever I can grab, pay no atten­tion to my per­sonal prob­lem areas, it might feel like I’m keep­ing my head above water. But I’m also giv­ing away energy and intel­li­gence, and they’re hard to get back.

    And to make it even harder, going through this life isn’t really like swim­ming in a pool, it’s like swim­ming in a river or ocean. All the time you’re react­ing to the ele­ment of the water, there are other ele­ments work­ing either for you or against you. The cur­rents and tides might take you where you want or where you don’t. A per­son who’d think they were going to swim some beau­ti­ful stroke like the but­ter­fly in the ocean would be an idiot — you need to find some­thing you can sus­tain, some­thing that may not look that good but also doesn’t waste energy. You still need mus­cles, intel­li­gence and nerve. The resul­tant hybrid might not look like any­thing that would win an Olympic medal, but the stakes in this event is quite a bit higher.

    There is a fourth option, I believe, but it’s not in our con­trol. We can be car­ried. It’s rather like the “Foot­prints in the Sand” poem that showed up on way too many greet­ing cards in the ’80s. But I think it became a cliche because there was truth in it. At the very worst of times, God car­ries you. When we feel like we’re going down, we all want that to hap­pen, but it’s not for us to say.

    When we’re swim­ming, there’s only one way to do it — you keep your eye on a focal point and don’t look away, not if you get tossed, not if you want to see how far you’ve come. You keep your eye on Jesus Christ as Peter did when he walked on the waves, or else you sink as Peter did when he feared the tempest.

    That’s trite-sounding. It just hap­pens to be true. And we’re lucky as Ortho­dox, because our wor­ship ser­vices give us more than enough to pon­der if we want to enter more deeply into faith. For instance, below are the words to a tropar­ion that we’ll all hear tomor­row; most of us won’t even hear it. What would our days be like if we really con­sid­ered the words to the services?

    Well, I don’t know whether our stroke would be ele­gant or clumsy, effi­cient or inef­f­i­cent. But we wouldn’t be sink­ing, that’s for sure.

    Tropar­ion of the Res­ur­rec­tion, Tone 4

    Hav­ing learned the joy­ful message

    Of the res­ur­rec­tion from the angel,

    The women dis­ci­ples of the Lord

    Cast from them their parental condemnation,

    And proudly broke the news to the dis­ci­ples, saying,

    “Death hath been spoiled! Christ God is risen,

    Grant­ing the world great mercy!”


    Related posts:

    1. Feed­ing your­self, feed­ing others
    2. O Heav­enly King …

    August 25th, 2007 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 08.25.2007

    Amen.

    I have to admit, the But­ter­fly is one stroke I am abysmal at.

  • Denise

    I for one, am not sure true “swim­ming” exists this side of glory. Some just dog­gie pad­dle bet­ter than oth­ers and swal­low less water in the process, and judg­ing from your entry about Mother Theresa and St. John the Fore­run­ner, even they swal­lowed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of water.

  • Grace

    Maybe in that way it’s like a flight instructor’s advice to his class: any land­ing you can walk away from is a good landing.

    As I said, I’d love to get through every­thing in some “beau­ti­ful” way, but get­ting through it all is the main thing.

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