On learning to swim again.

I had a swim this morning.
I know what you're thinking,
'Here she goes again.
Can we talk about something else?'

The thing is, I've had to learn to swim again over the last week or so.
Not just because I can swim in the lake again, 
or that I can glide forward while swimming, 
or even that I'm no longer tethered to the washing line.

It's more that I'm no longer clock-watching,
or distance-checking,
or adding things up, wrongly as it turned out.

My Channel swim is done.
I'm free to swim, when, and where, and how I want to,
when I'm not working, 
obvs.

I'm not a natural clock-watcher.
I respond better to a vague routine, rather than a rigid timetable.
And when I pray, there is no concept of a 'quiet time', 
or even a prayer-time,
more a sense of God's presence with me wherever I am.

A noticing, 
a pondering,
a reflecting...
Then turning my thoughts and reflections heavenwards.

It works for me.
I know it wouldn't work for everyone.
But isn't that the wonderful thing about faith?
We don't have to be the same as everyone else.

God meets us where we are.
Exactly, where we are,
right now,
today.

And so I remember why and how I swim.
"It enables my body to open up,
to breathe deep...
to unfurl.
To come home to myself"
(Ian Adams, Running over Rocks)

Prayer has the same effect.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
God loves me, and you
just the way we are.







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