Swimming in the Sea of Doubt

by Judy Bevilacqua

During the travels of my younger days, I remember the deep respect I practiced (fear would be more accurate) while swimming in the awesome surf near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Then there was the memory of tiptoeing through a minefield of poisonous sea urchins, in order to enjoy the sumptuous blue waters of the Mediterranean off the coast of France. I also remember the colorful stew of sea-life, from lobsters to moray eels, surrounding a dive in the Sea of Cortez in Baja. Most familiar of all, are the many adventures in the chilly purity of the NW’s Puget Sound and traversing Hood Canal. But nothing I experienced has prepared me for swimming in the “Sea of Doubt.” Nothing.

I realized something was happening to me a few years ago. A huge backlog of denial drifted loose from its moorings and set free a raft of “questions without answers.” This was neither a comfortable nor familiar situation for an old evangelically schooled woman. I had acquired no survival skills for this condition of soul. These questions were teeming with dangerous implications. Threats of apostasy and damnation circled menacingly just under the surface. Right on schedule, the guilt to which I am prone, produced a riptide for my unstable emotions. Not safe waters for swimming! I could sink and drown out there.

Reading John 21, in a recent lectionary passage, I was moved by Peter’s leap into the sea to swim to the resurrected Christ, who was calmly preparing breakfast for his band of doubters. I was reminded of Peter’s earlier plunge into deep water as he followed the Savior. Walking those few steps on top of the sea, then….sinking in panic. What was it about Peter that so often got him into deep water with his faith? His impulsiveness has always been endearing to me; testing his own limits and God’s patience - usually at the same time. I have grown to trust Christ more easily in the wake of Peter’s failures, rather than in the light of his displays of faith. His “sink or swim” attitude seems the best training model for swimming through doubt. There’s no way around it. Best to make friends with it. Dive right in.

I remember training for my ocean swim a couple of years ago. I ordered a video that was recommended for endurance swimming. It introduced me the T.I. technique, developed by Terry Laughlin, an American swimming coach. The initials stand for “total immersion,” or what he describes as fish-like swimming. TI approaches swimming as a mindful practice done in the spirit of yoga or tai chi. The aim is to become more self-aware and to feel "one with the water." After my childhood Red Cross training, it felt so counter-intuitive! This method asks you to lower your head in the water, not struggle and strain to stay on “top.” You are encouraged to sink down into the water and relax, to let your hands move like anchors - not paddles. And most helpful of all: to swim more quietly - minimize waves and splash. Recently, this training came back to me, as I considered the spiritual swim with which I am challenged at this season of my life and faith. I am in need of new techniques to help me stay afloat in this sea of doubt. Not with the goal to conquer those doubts, and stay “on top,” or to arrive at any particular destination, but simply to learn to breathe and relax for the long haul – this “crossing over Jordan!”

Since I’ve ceased thrashing about on the surface, gasping for quick answers and easy solutions, the terror has lessened. What was weighing me down, was the exhausting effort it took to manufacture certitude. Like swimming in a wool coat, it just got heavier and heavier. Finally, I just slipped it off and found I wasn’t drowning after all. I could hear the deep silence. Could just “be still and know that (He) is God” - in some completely ambiguous way. These days, I am finding myself able to relax and sink down into my questions and fears. There are plenty of them. I don’t need to tell you what they are. Yours might have different names. These doubts are not the enemies of God that I imagined them to be. They are not the opposite of faith. Just the shadow side, the view from underneath.

I always imagined that real faith would resemble Peter’s on the water, defying the laws of gravity – at least in those brief seconds before he sank. But in the end, those whose faith seems the most real to me, are those who’ve sunk peaceably into the deep, unfathomable waters of God’s great mystery and man’s undeniable humanity - and called it home.

Ah, there’s the tension! This very suspense by which we are somehow held by God - in suspension - (even, at times, suspension of belief), is the same uncertainty by which we “live and move and have our being” in God. To quote Parker Palmer: “I thought God was in the general direction of up. But I’ve learned that God is down and in.” And maybe our own resurrection, like birth or baptism, happens in the deep water - not on, or above, or in spite of it. Perhaps Jesus experienced his own Resurrection in just such a daring and doubt-filled sea.