Body Surfing

I've never gotten up on water skis...been snow skiing a few times. Never gotten the chance to try a surf board...but I had a summer love, back in 1973, in Virginia Beach...a musician with a voice like an angel...he taught me so much, the poetry of William Blake, classical choral music, the term "biome" as we went on endless nature trails discovering the floral and fauna of a coastal region...and how to use a bong (wondered if anyone was out there)...we'd walk the beach at night, catching strange little animals that arrived on the surf...looked like giant pill bugs that would tickle your hand and roll into a ball when you caught them.  They tickled my feet and made me laugh a lot. Back then, I had no real fear of much of anything...I took it as it came, I was already wounded...and since I hadn't died...I was still brave. 

David taught me so much.  Most of it is not necessaryfor my tale here. David, I wonder if he is still alive.  When the world continued to disappoint him, he went even deeper into drugs, never finding what he was looking for. After two years of the most beautiful letters a girl could even receive, I had to stop writing. Drugs nearly killed him. He lost the use of his legs. Even then, he would not change his behavior. Still looking for that perfect high.  Yet he taught me one thing that, to this day, is some of the most fun in the world. He taught me to body surf. And while there were a lot of mistakes made back then, I will always think of David fondly...and our adventures on and near the shore. I write that here, to remember him kindly, wherever he is...hoping he finally found what he was looking for...

Body surfing, There is just nothing like it.  You are the earth become one....which I suppose you can say that we are one with the earth all the time...but in body surfing, you grab a tremendous force of nature and you ride it, without a board, or any special tools...but in that moment of nature's power, you find yourself suddenly in sync with it...you ride it and it rides you...but you have absolutely no control of where it takes you,or really too much of how it takes you...and it is so powerful...but it doesn't kill you...I cannot think of a physical activity that is more thrilling.

And I bring that here this day because, if I was to try to describe to you my prayer life and my encounters with God...I would have to describe them as being a lot similiar to body surfing. It's not for everyone...and some people like to have a whole lot of tools as their disposal to get to the "oneness with Him"...yet, encountering God is not an act of the will...but it is easier to encounter Him when we are weak, exhausted, lost...and so tired that we have no choice but to be completely submissive. 

That was how it felt the first time I experienced God. Maybe I had been searching for a wave...but I did not consciously look for it. I had been broken into a being so small, I marveled that anyone could see me at all. I no longer wanted anything...except maybe to die...but I didn't even care if I lived or I died. I didn't care much about anyone or anything...I just prayed, not for a husband, not for a job, not for anything...except for all the pain to go away...and at that period of my prayer life, I was just beginning to have hope...an small hint of maybe this existence is just a bit bigger than what it seems (and all these words are looking back 15 years to that first time, that first movement of God inside me)
and I knew it was something good and strange and yet something about it feeled a bit like love but I wasn't sure except that the word ''perfect" seemed to describe it and it was ovetaking me like a great rush of...water...

And that's how and why I wasn't afraid. I remembered the body surfing...I 'felt' this huge, powerful thing overwhelm me...this existence that seemed to want to be a part of me...this entry into heaven...or something very good at the very least...an explosion of bliss and contentment that is unexplainable...these words do it no justice...but it was very scary...yet wonderful, at the same moment. I don't remember being aware of anything except 'happy' or 'peace' or 'joy'...none of these words do it justice...if it is an 'it' at all.

I stayed with it. I stay on the wave, I let it take me anywhere it wanted to go. I was completely happy...for how long I do not know...but some part of my brain kicked back in...reason came to me and part of me wept at the thought of the first thought...because the thought pulled me out of the wave. I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the ground, green carpet pressing next to the socket of my right eyeball. I hated the thought of moving, but since I had become aware of myself again, I knew I had to leave. I was back in reality...and I was a little bit sad about that. I did not want to get up. 

If you know the exhaustion of a perfect encounter with someone, or perhaps you might have just completed the highest jump of your life, and you have spent every bit of energy you had inside of you and are a bit surprised that you are still breathing, that is something like how it felt.

The difference is, the meaning behind it. I won no trophy, I did not best another human being, I wrote no book, ate no perfect meal, created no new life...or did I?  No, what happened...I had nothing to do with, it happened to me. I couldn't have planned anything so blissful...but...I simply became completely aware that I was loved. Perhpas this event is so indredible to me because I felt so deeply unloved...so the movement to love was dramatic. If that is true, I pity anyone who has not had trials in life, because all the trials are worth those moment,s however they arrived, of such complete joy.