SHE ROSE TO THE CHALLENGE…..AND LOVED IT

I am a pastor of a rather nontraditional church called the Patio.  I am also a person whose entire life has been closely linked to the ocean.  One of the ocean activities in which we as a church engage is gorilla diving.  We made up that name.  We use sit-on-top kayaks as our transportation  to the dive sites.  It is a super fun way to dive, but it is not for the lazy or unfit diver, hence the name gorilla.  It is an energy-intense way of  engaging in adventure, as we have to load the kayaks onto the trailer, then unload them at the launch site.  Then we have to put our SCUBA gear on board. Then we paddle to the dive site, which in this instance was 1.5 miles distant.  We then suit up on the rocking little craft, make the dive, clamber back aboard after the dive, paddle the 1.5 miles back to the trailer, offload the equipment, and finally put the kayak back on the trailer.  Of course, as soon as we get home we have to park the trailer and wash off all the equipment.   Hard work?  Yes.  But it is one of my favorite activities.

On this particular day, four of us paddled out to a little island called Isla Merito, in the Sea of Cortez near the city of La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.The winds were light. The water chilly for us people spoiled rotten by the very warm waters we dive during the summer.   Even before we got into the water we knew that visibility was barely acceptable for a dive.  Heavy winds during the days  prior to the dive had blown  from north to south the entire length of the Sea of Cortez. The waves  created by these winds were not high, but  they were wide, thick at their base, indicating massive amounts of stored energy.  The waves were not steep-faced but more like gently rolling hills.  It was a lovely ocean surface on which to paddle as the rollers lifted and lowered us gently up and down.     But we knew that as the wide, rolling surge met the rocky cliffs on the island the waves would steepen, rise up and hurl themselves like test cars crashing  into a wall with us being the crash test dummies.

We anchored our kayaks in the calm, protected waters behind the small island.  We made sure we did not drop our anchors into the delicate corals.  For legal, courtesy and safety reasons we displayed   much larger than needed dive flags on the kayaks.  We wanted to let other boaters know there were divers in the water.

Our dive plan was to swim around the island.  It was a shallow dive, never more than 40 feet deep, so our air supply would be adequate to circumnavigate the island and return to our anchored kayaks.

We enjoyed the corals and the countless fish. We rounded the southernmost tip of the island at a depth  of 30 feet and could feel the swell of the rolling waves above us.   It  was nothing about which to concern ourselves.

At a jumbled pile of rocks, my buddy, a young woman, spotted a massive lobster.  Our dive site was  a protected wildlife preserve so catching the lobster was out of the question.  I stopped to take photos of the lobster.  The other buddy team continued on its way, leaving my buddy and me on our own.  This was a common practice for us so we thought nothing of it.  We were still designated buddy teams.

At the northern end of the small island there is a 50-meter-wide channel  that separates the island from the Baja peninsula.  The water is only 15 feet deep in the channel.

My buddy and I neared the channel which would lead us to the calm waters behind the island and  then 200 meters more back to our kayaks.    The nearby shoreline  and the sloping sea floor funneled the ocean rollers into the channel. After a 1,500 kilometer  wind driven journey, the gently rolling waves transformed themselves into something like a violent  washing machine. The water hurled us rapidly one way, and then reversed direction and hauled us back in the opposite direction. The sea floor in that area consisted of a series of parallel 15-foot-deep mini canyons slicing through the rocks and coral.  As water rushed us one way and then back the other, we flew past the walls of the coral and rock, sometimes only inches away.  For experienced divers, it wasn’t dangerous and was actually kind of fun.  Had we so desired, with just a few energetic fin kicks we could have surged through the channels into the calm water in the lee of the island.

Hower, this was a first for my buddy.  She had not dived in surge or currents before this. It was apparent that she was not enjoying the amusement park roller coaster ride being provided by the high energy ocean swells. I had not anticipated the funneling affect on the waves so had not briefed my buddy on these conditions Later, when we were back on the kayaks, she told me her greatest concern was not for herself but rather that her tank would smash to corals as we flew by. Good for her.

Even though I knew she was capable of handling the surge, I decided to take her back to deeper water and swim back the way we had come instead of rounding the island via the turbulent  channel.  To keep us together in the rushing water, I took her by the hand, and together we swam to the bottom of one the canyons between the rocks.  On the incoming surge we held onto large rocks on the bottom and fluttered like airport wind socks in the  rushing current.  Then the surge reversed itself, and we shot back towards deeper water like missiles being launched.  After a few  back-and-forth cycles we were back in deeper water and beyond the grasp of the surge.  A few minutes of tranquility later, my buddy released my hand and we retraced our fin kicks all the way back to our anchored kayaks.

The other buddy team underwater-surfed their way through the channel and completed the circumnavigation of the island.

The best part of the dive happened at the very end.  I snapped a photo of my buddy on the surface  as she celebrated having done something new, difficult and confidence-building.  The joy in her face was evident.  Yes, she had been nervous in the surging, rushing water, but she knew that she was now a better diver for having experienced something new and challenging.  I love her “I think I can, will-try, can-do” attitude.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I am a pastor of a small, non-traditional church called the Patio.  The name is  appropriate because this group of Jesus followers, unencumbered by buildings, rents, bank accounts and budgets, meets in the front yard patio of our house.  We want to grow but not become big, so are looking for additional patios in which small groups can meet.  SCUBA diving and kayaking are part of my ministry, kind of like a Christian day camp but with no facilities to maintain.  I also use these ocean-based activities as a tool to show other Jesus followers that caring for the wonderful world King Jesus has given us is both an obligation and a privilege.  Sadly, many Christians don’t understand this aspect of God’s expectations for us yet, but thankfully more and more are discovering the joy of caring for God’s beautiful creation. 

I suppose that at It this point in this story I should come up with some kind of sermon illustration gleaned from this experience, something that will edify you if you are already a Jesus follower or perhaps guide you to Jesus if you are not yet one of his followers.  I will leave discovering the illustration and the life application up to you.