I remember learning how to swim.
It was a painful, long and drawn out process, spanning several summers when I was 5 and 6 years old.
When my Dad learned to swim he claims that his dad just threw him into a lake up near River Falls, traumatic, quick and very effective. I have always been thankful that my Dad chose not to make that a tradition to pass on.
No. When I learned to swim it was with two different sessions of swimming lessons and dad all trying to get me to just get over my fear and panic and to just let the water hold me.
Looking back I now admire the patience of all those involved in that exercise of semi futility.
I especially remember swimming out to my Dad and he kept backing up ever so slowly as I kept striving to reach out to him. I was infuriated.
Eventually I learned and it took.
Teaching my own children brought back many memories. All three learned differently.
There is that moment of balance when we are on the edge of sinking, of panicking, of struggling when we tip over into letting the waters hold us up with slow and graceful strokes of hand and foot.
Before that moment we can’t swim, afterward we can.
Before that we fight the water, afterward we live with the water.
Most of us have these memories and experiences.
Some of us are naturals when it comes to the water, others are slower, others always struggle, and some never learn, and some drown.
There is a river whose waters lap out our feet inviting us to wade out further and further until we are over our heads and we float and we swim and we let the waters carry us.
Grace is hard to live with.
It always invites us out deeper, to stop fighting the water and to become gentle swimmers.
Naaman needed healing, he had leprosy, a skin condition that could become debilitating. He was a great soldier and commander. An asset to his people and his king. He always succeeded. Gifted and valued and valuable. And he knew it.
He came to the King of Israel to purchase healing.
He then went to visit Elisha for that healing for that miracle.
And he was told to simply wash seven times in the river Jordan.
A little river, a stream really.
And then comes these great lines.
Naaman says, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servant approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it?”
And he goes and washes and is healed.
Learning to swim in the river we have to give up even our own virtue and merit, we can’t take it with us. The journey that the river of grace takes us on has no place for such apparel, we go necked into the water, we have to let go or be dragged under.
What is stopping us from learning to swim?
What do we hold onto that stops us from going deeper into the water?
We all learn differently. We all swim differently.
But this river of grace carries all us.
What does it mean to live knowing that these waters never run dry? Knowing that the more we share these waters the more water there is for all to live in?
What does it mean knowing that these waters are for everyone? That we all have to give up both our cherished virtues and sins to learn to gently swim and be held up?
We are all learning to swim.
We are all teachers as well, helping others to learn to swim in this river.
Students and teachers of swimming with grace.
Let’s float down the river together, lest see what is just up ahead, lets see who we can invite along.
The river of grace, flowing from the abundance of love at the heart of God, the cup runneth over with the love of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit for one another, and we are held up by their bounty.
I remember learning to swim.
It was scary.
I will always cherish those memories and that moment of finally being held up by the water.