If you know me, you know I love to swim. Early morning, noon, evening. I just feel so at home in the water. I don’t know why. I just know that water is fascinating, exhilarating and where I just love to be.
When studied photography it was water that captured my attention: how it moves, reflects light and colour. I am mesmerised by its endless patterns and rhythmic dances. I play piano and the flow of the notes and chords are echos of water falling or trickling.
Travelling in Italy I stood watching the rippling waters of Venice’s Grand Canal, the dazzling water spouts at Rome’s Trevi Fountain. In Napoli I took a boat to Capri. The star attraction on the way was supposed to be a visit to the Blue Grotto, a cave where the water, illuminated by natural light, looked like a pool of melted sapphires. But this was not what sold it to me; for me was same, as it ever is, can I dive in and swim? I chose a trip that also included said two stops in open water. and swim in open water. Bliss.
I can’t just observe water, stand on the side and applaud it. I have to get in, immerse myself. I need to enter that other world of slow time and muffled sound, where light refracts and my body is weightless. Where I slip and slide with an elegance and grace that escapes me on land.
I guess my relationship with God is like that. I have never been able to stand on the side and wave. When I found out that God loves me it was a no brainer to jump off shore and dive in. I had no history in God, I just found out about Him when I was about nine years old. Someone told me He loved me and I just believed it and His love came swooshing in. It was like in the Wizard of Oz, where the world changes from black and white to glorious colour.
I read Psalm 1 recently. It says that I am blesses as I meditate IN God’s law. It struck me it was not ON his law. Not standing on the side, reading it at arms length, stroking my chin and nodding wisely at the meaning of it (though that is a reasonable option too). Instead it is to meditate IN His law. For me it’s about diving in fully. Emerging myself and finding out who He is and how He loves me.
C.S.Lewis’s Last Battle has the children eventually not return to Narnia, but start their lives in heaven. They discover it is endless and there is more and more to discover. The unicorn Jewel stamps the ground and shouts “Farther Up and Farther In.” It is not a dry and boring exposition of God but an eternal journey of discovery of Him as we go deeper and deeper and deeper into Him.
And this reminded me of what I have heard James Finley say often in his podcast Turning to the Mystics (1). I paraphrase… ‘Sometimes when we seek God we do so in earnest yet all the time do not realise that He is already here, within and without us. We are like fish swimming, looking for the ocean, but not realising we are already swimming in it’.
In Him we live and move and have our being Acts 17 v 24, says St Paul and Psalm 139 says I can’t go anywhere where He isn’t. He is everywhere and my whole life is in Him. Surrounded by Him and swimming in this never ending ocean of God.
(1) James Finley https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/turning-to-the-mystics-with-james-finley/id1494041647
Into the heart of things 