Maybe it helps to have learned how to swim only in middle age. As a result of coming to this activity so late, I still feel a vivid sense of wonder that the water holds me up. What a miracle that I can make my way on top of mounds of water, no matter how deep they lie below me!
After all, water would seem not to have enough solidity to support the weight of my body. When you scoop it up into your hand, water appears entirely too weak to sustain a single pound, much less hundreds and thousands. How can it possibly support my weight or that of huge ships of one hundred thousand tons?
By now, my sinking seems hardly a possibility. Unless I deliberately swim beneath the surface, there is almost no way in which I will go under. The water appears to have a buoyancy that keeps me on top, prevents my body from slipping beneath the ocean waves or the ripples in a pond or pool.
There is something so elemental about the water that surrounds me as I swim! Considering that so much of my bodily substance is composed of water, I am not only surrounded by it but almost formed by it, inside and out. What is this mysterious stuff – water – that remains so close to who I am physically?
The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles considered water one of the four basic elements that make up reality. He thought it one of the fundamental materials of nature. Given the importance that modern science gives to water in the universe, it is not hard to see how Empedocles arrived at his view. His was a profound insight, one still worth thinking about.
So, on these summer days I travel to the water, immerse myself in that delicious world, and marvel at being carried along almost effortlessly. I lie on my back with abandon, in confidence that this fluid will serve as my bed for as long as I wish. How refreshing to feel the coolness of the water; how reassuring to feel buoyed by its all-embracing lightness of being!
For a time, at least, my anxieties flow away. Now I can follow the urgings of spiritual writer Elizabeth Lesser “to be at home with your life just as it is; to rest gently on the waters of the mysterious universe.”
These summer days also bring the subtle pleasures of sitting outside on the porch, breathing in the early morning or late evening breezes. The air is so delicious it makes me feel tempted to stay there long enough to let work go undone. The crisp gentle rush of air touches my face and reaches inward to my soul.
Not surprisingly, Empedocles named air as another of the four elements that make up reality. Again, his was the profound insight to recognize how all-encompassing is the air around us. The Greek philosopher would presumably have welcomed the description that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins gave of air, over two thousand years after the time of Empedocles.
These are the images that Hopkins applied to it:
“Wild air, world-mothering air / Nestling me everywhere.”
And later:
“This needful, never spent, / And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink, / My meal at every wink.”
Air seems even closer to spirit than is water. You cannot see it at all, only feel its effects. It circulates over my face, bringing me refreshment and peace, but I fail to grab hold of it. Perhaps because of its physical subtlety the air can reach into me and touch my soul.
When air forms into wind, as it often does these summer evenings at the approach of thunder storms, then it stirs stronger emotions. Then one feels power, the dynamism of the world around us. Air then evokes in me awe, along with awareness that not all the soul’s surroundings can be peace and quiet.
No, days and nights will also be marked by turmoil, at least at times, and I will have to wrestle with the powers and principalities of evil. But always I hold hope of return to those times when the air will blow peacefully once more.
Richard Griffin