Surfing Junk

My Brother, Making the Most of Not Much
If you see him, tell him he looked fat.

Whenever I tell people that I surf the response is generally the same; "Where do you surf?" I don't know if they might have noticed, but there is an ocean down the street. It's huge. Then the inevitable comment, "There's no surf in the Gulf." My uncharitable side wants to respond "Good, then stay out of the water" but I usually just smile and say, "You're right" and leave it at that. Of course there is always the pseudo-surfer, the poseur, or in the industry jargon: the kook. This is the person that assures me that they are a surfer but they don't surf in the Gulf because there are no waves. Usually this is followed with, "I only surf when I go to Hawaii". As the conversation goes on I find they haven't been to Hawaii in five years and have only ever been once. I don't mean to impose or rush to judgment but if you live here and only surf in Hawaii and the last time you were there was half a decade ago, guess what... you're not a surfer! You are a person who has surfed. Owning a pair a surf-trunks (a.k.a. boardshorts) does not make you a surfer any more than owning a crucifix makes you a saint. In fact, this is the hypocrisy that Christ condemned the Pharisees for. The Pharisees were more concerned with looking holy than actually being holy, they were more concerned with performance-art than prayer. "What's the point," you say?

The world is full of people who are forever waiting on ideal conditions: "I'll go when the waves are better", "I need a new board", "I don't feel God's presence". The problem is that ideal conditions rarely happen. Ideal conditions are rare because they so heavily depend on or subjective definition of ideal. If we are waiting on a perfect wave before we will get in the water we will wait our lives away. There is always an excuse, a way out. An attitude of waiting for perfect timing or perfect conditions creates a habit. There is an underlying issue here: if we say we are a surfer, that we want to surf, but never go because we are waiting on the perfect wave, it will never come. And even if it does, we won't know what to do with it because we don't know how to surf. Here's one further, if we've never surfed, I'd wager we wouldn't even recognize a perfect wave when it did come.

So... connect this to our spiritual lives...

It's simple, surf the junk. If we are only willing to enter into our spiritual lives when conditions are perfect (whatever that means) we never will. There are days (or months or even years) when God seems distant, possibly absent and our prayer is an act of the will because emotion is gone. There are days when the waves are small and we think there's no point: this is when we are really surfing. The moments that test our faith are when our faith grows and is strengthened. The decision to enter into a contemplative life must be an act of the will. It cannot be simply a reaction to external stimulus. It is another paradox of faith that we are often closer to God the more distant He seems.

God offers us consolations (in many cases) because our faith is weak and needs something tangible to get us going. My favorite (living) philosopher, Peter Kreeft, said in a lecture over the weekend that "Mystical experiences are almost certainly less important than you think they are". He was getting at the concept faith constantly rewarded is no faith at all. If we are relying on emotional highs to keep us coming back to God, there is no faith there, rather we are treating God like a supernatural drug-dealer: I'll keep coming back as long as you keep providing a high, but if you stop, I'll leave. The little things we do everyday are what brings us closer to God. The little things prepare us for the big things. If we can hold on in the dark, we can run in the light. If we learn to surf the junk waves we are prepared and we are effortless dropping into the eternity of a hurricane swell. After a while we realize that God is present everyday, all the time and we can stop wasting our lives waiting on perfect waves and know there is perfection in every wave. We realize that everyday we're in the water is the perfect day.

P.S. Just a little post-script here. The references to God's distance or absence refer to a spiritual occurrence traditionally known as the Dark Night. This is may or may not be experienced by someone who is close to God. It is NOT the absence of God felt (or not) by someone who has rejected God in their lives. It is the spiritual proving-grounds, the final battle before the ultimate victory.