From Where I Sit

June 15, 2007
Rev. Alicia McNary Forsey, Ph.D.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE OCEAN

This last week has been very busy for me at UUCPA. Delivering the sermon three Sundays in one month translates to six times in a church with two Sunday services. However, of the three priorities I have been given by the Board, it is the Sunday services that I enjoy the most. Hanging in there with a second priority given me — helping the church through a major transition period, is work that is charged with feelings because change impacts the lives of members and staff at UUCPA. I fret quite a bit over this part of my job. Pastoral counseling, the third priority, has come to be an honor, not a chore. To listen to the stories, the history and the perspectives of members has brought me to a sense of belonging here, even though it is for a brief time.

Arriving as a stranger, I will be leaving as a friend of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. I wish I could have been present for more social events, but the work I had been asked to do was already a little over half-time so I had to let go of of the dances, picnics and other events I know would have been most enjoyable.

All this preface to tell you how I learned to focus. I may not always succeed, but I do have determination. I learned most of what I know about this from spending a lot of time in the ocean. I was born in Hermosa Beach, California, and brought up in the next town, Manhattan Beach. Back then, these towns were small (Manhattan Beach was somewhere around 10,000). My family lived right next to the beach. When I was a baby, my mother took me to sit on the sand every day — unless it was raining.

The beach was my playground. When I was old enough to swim, I went out beyond where the waves crest and flow onto the shore. Out there it is another world. It is quiet and peaceful, but not a place I could stay for long. Then in High School I dated surfers who drove around in “woodies” (small station wagons with wooden trim and racks for surf boards) and was taught how to keep my balance, gage the waves and stay out of the way of surfing traffic. I still preferred body surfing, but either way requires making split-second decisions. Should I dive under this giant wall of water or go with it? There is no time for deliberation. The wrong choice equals disaster. A misjudgment in timing or an error in gaging the speed and the force of the water — a force so mighty it mercilessly slams everything it carries into the sand beneath, is a humbling experience for anyone who endures it. Like a rag in a huge tumble washer, hitting a hard surface over and over again until the machine stops. So, even when I made decisions to go for it, to take the wave in, sometimes I still got completely trashed. I was trashed enough to have a high respect for the power of the waves. One cannot dilly-dally in the water without being creamed.

Now sometimes people ask me how I make decisions so quickly. It is a lesson I learned from countless hours in the ocean. And, being decisive does not mean that I never make the wrong decision. I still get trashed, but now I am learning from the sea of human behavior I encounter in my work. Realizing my own mistakes, my own misjudgments, sometimes takes a while, unlike the waves in the ocean with immediate feedback. The result of error now is not outwardly visible scrapes and bruises. The consequences now are experiences that result in reflection on my actions and words, hurt feelings at not being understood because I failed to communicate clearly, and so on. But the learning is the same, and if I am not learning I feel like I am not tending to life, which is inexcusable.

The ocean is very much on my mind this week. A well-known surfer who was the President of my class in High School and had continued surfing and living in Hermosa Beach died from a massive stoke last week. He was our leader — a presence in my life from grade school to class reunions. He never left surfing. There will be a “paddle out” ceremony for him in a couple of weeks, where everyone who braved the waves with him will be on their boards and paddling out to sea to say goodby to him.

Members of UUCPA have lost good friends — some recently. Loss is bound to remind us of our own mortality. I am more in touch this week with my own brief time on this planet than I usually am as I go about my busy life. Part of me wants to just sit in my living room and look at the trees outside the window. Another part of me is telling me to keep at it because I am still here. Keeping at it feels like an act of courage sometimes. But, if I think about what I hope for I know my wishes will not be possible unless I continue to face the waves — face the sea of what I encounter in my daily life. It is risky business. You and I — we could get trashed. I hope for you and I hope for myself to find courage to face the waves, even though we may be taking a huge risk. Life without risk has few lessons.