I thought of Dory’s line from Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming. . . just keep swimming” in preparation for this piece and gave it a bit of twist based on a vicarious experience at the beach over the weekend.
My middle daughter unhesitatingly accepted an invitation from her Uncle Charlie, to go wave skiing- a sport that I frankly did not know existed. It involves sitting atop a surfboard – in tandem – each person wielding a kayak paddle, catching waves and riding them to shore. After an abbreviated instructional “session,” Charlie and my daughter marched into the surf.
After beating out past the breakers in a “securely” perpendicular fashion it was now time for the riding part which necessitates – as surfing does – being unnervingly parallel to the waves. With her Uncle’s coaching, she knew, albeit counter intuitively, to stick her paddle into the wave to stabilize their craft. As I thought about my own experience as a river guide, the whitewater equivalent of “leaning upstream” would have yielded a dramatically different result.
Nevertheless my daughter – whether she knew it consciously or not – had not only faith that everything would turn out OK but that she would likely have a lot of fun and learn something too. Ultimately, however, she had to trust her uncle who she could not see behind her- that he quite literally as well as figuratively “had her back.”
Upon returning from our trip, I happened upon a Ted Talk by professional kayaker, Steve Fisher, who took a team down the deadliest rapids on earth located on the Congo River. He proclaimed that the river over his lifetime “has taught me just about everything I need to know.” By this he meant how to overcome risk.
Growing up in South Africa, he had a happy and simple life. He recalls: “I had no TV, no video games but I did have a kayak and a river. I had the disadvantage of having very few kayak mentors to teach me what could be done in a kayak, but I had the distinct advantage of having nobody to tell me what could not be done.”
After seeing photographs of a failed French rafting expedition on the Congo as a young teenager, he set a goal of doing the same in a kayak, which he successfully accomplished some 15 years later. In preparation for this 1st decent, he did not ask himself, “What if we drown?” He asked instead, “How are we going to do this?”
He wasn’t entirely sure about how to prepare for what had never been done before except to ensure he was prepared physically and logistically and of course, mentally. He talked about how to “demystify risk” by taking a seemingly impossible task and breaking it down into smaller, manageable ones.
The hard part seems to be at the junctures where you can conceivably turn back.
At some point, however, as I myself have learned, whether you’re jumping out of an airplane or padding over a waterfall, there is a point of NO turning back. And this is where, Fisher suggests, it is essential that you don’t panic (apparently the key to Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, California Chrome’s greatness, according to his jockey!)
I recently read that we must “rest in order to risk.” Writer and pastor, Ken Baker made the point in the context of our relationship to God but I believe the principle is a universal one. We all need to quiet our minds – which can indeed be a battleground where the stories we tell ourselves about what cannot be done are reinforced and fears about the unknown are fueled – and subsequently “achieve” peace like a river, as the hymn goes.
Just like the river, so is our journey of faith. “Once you start,” Fisher says, “even if you don’t want to go, you have to.”
And you “just keep paddling” which perhaps is a fitting metaphor for prayer. Sometimes it’s all you can do.
It may seem like “shooting shafts into the dark” like Frederick Buechner describes or “posting letters to a non-existent address” as CS Lewis contemplates. Yet whether in turbulent water or a gentle current, we must stick our paddle in. Sometimes we flip and are re-righted, and sometimes we are miraculously stabilized . . . And sometimes we simply move forward at an indiscernible pace, save for the passing of the shoreline beside us.
In the ordinary hum drum or extraordinary mayhem of life, prayer is our part. And when we do our part , God will most surely do His. That may be, as Buechner suggests, to bring us to Himself . . . which just may be the deepest longing in each of us – whether we realize it or not.
– Caroline Watkins