Going for the Other Shore

I found You many times, but I didn't know it. When I found You in my daily long swims, then I knew. I needed to breathe in You as I dove under and stayed down until I came up to breathe the air again. And then I saw, when I came up, that I even needed You to breathe in the air, just as I had needed You to breathe without air.

I need You to breathe, and that has nothing to do with telling stories about it. I have stories to tell, but that is something else. That is sharing You. That is proclaiming You in the public, in the presence of those who are still looking to find You, and those who have already found, but need to remember.

I want to enjoy with You now, as we work together to bring back the light that shone in the past. The light that is hidden away within those events, those moments. In those daily, long swims at the lake, I found light.

What made me do it? I wanted to see if I could do it. As a little girl in summer camp, I would sit on the side while everyone else took their swimming lessons. I was terrified of the water. I needed to make friends with the water, understand it better, experience it, by putting first in a toe, then a foot, then a leg, and so on.

But the swimming counselor stood far away on the dock the blue haze and screamed to us, "Jump in!" How could I jump in, when I needed air to live, and couldn't get it in that watery cold mass. If only someone had explained to me about You, I could have done it.

So I sat on the side the whole summer until somebody noticed and told my mother. By that time, it was too late to teach me to swim.

I hated camp, and finally figured out that I could negotiate with my mother to let me stay home the next summer. I never went again.

When I was twelve, I was ready to face my fear. I asked my mother to send me for swimming lessons to the Y.M.C.A. The pool was a few floors down under and the whole underground room had a deafening echo. I felt I was underwater just sitting at the side of the pool.

I used mind over matter to master the art of swimming. Persisted and pushed myself into the water, pushed my arms through the water, told my head over and over again to turn into the water and out to the air. I even jumped in over my head and refused my fear. At the end of l0 weeks, I knew how to swim, but I didn't like it and developed a severe kidney infection and chronic respiratory infections that began on the way home from the pool when the wind whipped my wet head.

I didn't become a swimmer after that. I became one who knows how to swim without the stigma of one who doesn't know how to swim. The pleasure of swimming was still hidden away.

I found that pleasure in my early twenties when I moved up north to a small community on the Maine Coast, where I discovered a beautiful glacial lake, like a gem tucked away, in the dip between two hills.

There was no one standing on the dock and telling me to jump. When I slipped into the water, I felt it gently part for me. Yes, it was a different medium, but not unfriendly and certainly not frightening. I found that even the original shock of cold wore off after a few minutes as my body temperature adjusted to its body temperature.

The lake was full of water lilies, especially in the late summer, and soft green chunks of underwater plant life. There were fish that darted just under the surface of the water. They were not afraid. And the lilies that were rooted far down on the bottom of the lake were floating gracefully in the sight of the full sun. They were certainly not afraid, not even when the air turned brisk at the end of summer, and their days were numbered.

Now You taught me how to swim. You taught me in the most gentle, pleasant spot on the whole earth where You had taken me. You wanted me to let go and trust in the waters. You wanted me to know that I wouldn't sink. You wanted me to feel how I would not sink, not now or ever, because of Your loving arms.

I took on myself a regimen, or a better sounding word, a practice of going to the lake daily by myself in the late afternoon. I waded into the water and then dove under and up to begin a long swim across the lake. I fell into an easy rhythm of swimming the side stroke, as I watched the shore move by. I felt myself gliding through the water with an energy or force that was not mine, and that's when I knew that I was not alone. I knew that I was being assisted in this long swim, because I have never been and will never be a long-distance swimmer or any kind of athlete.

About a quarter of the way across, I would always feel a gradual shift inside of me. I slowly felt myself turning from a body into a soul that happened to have a body. It was my soul effortlessly gliding through the water. The body was heavy, but the soul was as transparent as the light falling on the water from the sun on its way down in the sky.

I was connected all the way through creation and felt that overwhelming sense of peace which I had never felt before. I had slipped out of time. Here there were no limits and no fears, and nothing to overcome. It was being done for me. I just had to let go and let myself be carried through the water.

Even the body was no longer mass and had turned into pure energy. And the Source of that energy was both outside of me, and inside of me at the same time.

I was not alone. You were carrying me, just as you were carrying me in every step I took on dry land. But here, I felt myself being gracefully pulled across the lake, and it was undeniable. I was simply not alone, doing it by myself.

And then I would become filled with a great wave of thankfulness. I was feeling grateful for the amazing transformation. It had turned life from a frightening challenge, something that had to be overcome, into something entirely different, which I couldn't explain yet. I just wanted to enjoy it. The great wave of gratitude that settled around my heart and pulsed bigger and bigger. But Who was I thanking?

You...

          Varda Branfman