It is my intention to publish a full-length book in 2020 entitled The Mystic Bodyboarder: How God Found Me In The Water. This book is my personal “saltwater” memoir of how God found me in the waves on Carolina and Kure Beach while I was bodyboarding with an old cheap bodyboard I pulled from my neighbor’s trash. It is the story of how I learned to play with God in the waves, recapture my true self, and hear His voice as I hung out with Him in the sea.
This simple “saltwater” memoir is a book about joy, hope, suffering, and finding new meaning in my life at a time when things around me seemed to be imploding professionally, economically, and spiritually.
The old tired religious answers of my past no longer worked for me nor served me well. I was hungry to meet the One who was speaking to me in the sea, and He showed up!
When everything around me seemed to be unraveling, I would take my bodyboard to the sea to find relief. And after catching a few waves, I became enveloped in absolute joy, peace, and wonder. I became a child again and found the One who made this beautiful world.
As a bodyboarder, I became convinced that God wants to encounter us when we play and connect with him in nature. All of life is sacred, and if we begin to view our hobbies, passions, and the things that bring us joy as sacramental acts, then we can expect to start to experience God in those beautiful things that are most meaningful to us. Even in the mundane.
This is my story of how God found me in the water.
I entered a contest in North Carolina in 2017 that was hosted by First Bank. The name of the competition was called Dream It. Do It. I requested $25,000 for a Bodyboarding trip to Portugal and financial assistance so I could take a couple of months off and write my book. Sadly, I did not win the contest, but this video reflects in a clear and concise what my book is about and why I feel it must be written.
I decided to put this contest promo video on my website to capture the essence of my book The Mystic Bodyboarder: How God Found Me In The Water. Even though I did not win the contest, my vibration and joy concerning bodyboarding and my book went through the roof when I made this video. The Creator’s presence felt so intense to me when I recorded it, and I wanted to share it with you.
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I am glad you are taking this “Soul Surfing” journey with me.
Read an excerpt from the Book:
Soul Surfing in God
Slowly, I began to realize I was not going with the new current and natural flow of my life. Deep yearnings, desires, and long lost dreams kept popping up in the forefront of my mind, and they refused to be ignored.
Somehow I was able to ignore their cries for a while and even put them on the back burner of my heart. I kept promising myself I would get back to those inner voices but they refused to be silenced any longer. My soul came to a stop and demanded to be heard; it wanted to go in a different direction. My soul had awakened, and my true self wanted to be reconned with.
Echoes and memories of my childhood kept flooding in like ripples from eternity past. Memories of playing in the snow and doing daredevil stunts with my sled on Mr. Brown’s hill when I was only ten years old. Whispers came to me, while I was in the sea, that we were not meant to stop playing when we get older but as George Bernard Shaw wisely said, “We get older because we stop playing.” A truth I had forgotten.
Oceana says that she thinks one of the reasons I love bodyboarding so much is that it triggered the happy memories of my childhood when I was sled riding with my friends.
I think she might be right.
When I bodyboard, I am ten years old again. Something magical happens. I briefly transcend sorrow and the pains of this world. Life for a moment becomes bearable, time slows down and even seems to stop.
Silence comes over the sea, and I step through a thin veil, and at that moment God and I become one in thought, motive, and deed. He wants to play, and I gladly join him with my bodyboard.
Bodyboarding reminds me of who I was, who I am, and who I am becoming. I may be 57, but to God, I will always be His beloved child, and He wants to play with me. I am not just bodyboarding and body surfing in the waves at Carolina Beach; I am soul surfing in God.
A deep calm settles over me as I leave the static landscape and enter the live waters of the sea. Often when I first get into the water, I am consumed by the cares of this world but when you are riding waves and playing with God, you have to let go of everything and flow with the harmony and rhythm of the sea. The first thing to go is your physical stress.
When large waves are coming, you have to get moving and start engaging the surf. If you don’t, you could get seriously hurt! Getting flipped in a wave can be a lot of fun; if you have learned how to handle the fall.
Once I got flipped and landed on my head; I almost blacked out. It was a painful experience. I could have broken my neck. I guess some would say I got lucky.
I attempted to take on a big wave after it peaked. I got greedy and should have let it go and waited for the next one behind it. When I recovered myself in the water, I looked up and saw the most beautiful rainbow I had ever seen. There were ten other surfers in the water that day, and for a brief moment, we were all transfixed by the shimmering radiance of the rainbow. People in the water see fantastic sites that the rest of the world often just ignores, takes for granted, or are too busy to experience. When you are soul surfing, you see everything.
Glimpses of God
The Bible says that Moses wanted to see God’s face, but God told Moses that he could not handle seeing the raw essence of Divine Source or God’s glory. So God agreed to let Moses see only a tiny glimpse of God’s glory as He placed him in a protective cleft of a rock. The little bit of God that Moses experienced that day caused his face to glow for weeks!
Surfers and bodyboarders get to see glimpses of God’s essence as they linger in the water. In those moments we transcend this world and realize that we are not the center of the universe and that our perception of reality is limited. The only response to such displays of Divinity and Transcendence is humility, acceptance, and compassion.
As we leave the waves, the way we worship or pay homage to the One who made the sea is to learn to be mindful and grateful for our lives, live in the present, and show compassion to the one that God puts in our paths. I believe this is what it means, in essence, to be a soul surfer.
As I got lost in God’s glory and the beauty of the rainbow, I had to wake up! Another huge wave came crashing down on me.
