PLAY-Book: An interlude about surfing

Note: This is a reflection I wrote in 2019 about how God changed my life through surfing. Needless to say, the meaning of that experience has continued to open up for me as I've gotten more interested in the power of play as it relates to formation. Enjoy!

God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news. (2 Thessalonians 2 :13-14a, NRSV)

On June 24 and 25, my wife and I took three surf lessons at Pacific Beach in San Diego, on the tail end of our first vacation as Californians.

On July 21, I got my first surfboard, a soft-top my mother-in-law bought me from Costco so I wouldn’t have to keep renting.

On July 25, I wrote, “I honestly think Jesus is saving my life through surfing. Guess I better say more soon about what I mean by that.”

I’ve had many more days in the water since, and I still think that’s true. And I’m making some progress on understanding what I mean.

For starters, surfing has helped me get super clear that there’s a difference between

• exercising for fitness,
• having a side hustle, and
• enjoying a hobby for its own sake.

This learning has brought to mind a memory. After my first six months or so of engineering school many years ago, a friend asked me if I was enjoying it.

“I find it totally fascinating,” I told him.

“Kyle, you find lots of things fascinating.”

My friend was on Team Kyle Should Be A Journalist. Or an English major or something, I forget. Priest probably wasn’t on his list, but I think it better approximates the energy and style he thought I needed in my life than engineering school did.

I’d say I’ve found lots of my work, my relationships, and my experiences interesting: stimulating, fulfilling—and, yes, often—enjoyable.

Surfing is something else. Surfing, for me, is joy. Surfing is delight.

Surfing has me leaping out of bed on dark and chilly mornings.

As I think about what is missing in my Christian witness—both the word and the deed—I’m confronted by the reality that the answer is joy and delight. I think I’m not alone in this, especially among white American Christians and especially especially among white Episcopalians.

For me to know and be and share Good News, to play my part as first fruits of salvation, I need a steady stream of Good News myself. And I should expect to experience it via a variety of imagined ideas and embodied emotions, and the variety of activities that mediate them: worship, prayer, relationships, eating, learning, serving, and—for me—surfing.

By the latter I mean, more generally, that we should expect to experience Good News in the activities we enjoy.

It’s tempting, and not exactly wrong, for Christians to ask something like, “But what is distinctively Christian about experiencing God’s gift of delight via surfing, or hiking, or going to concerts, or stamp collecting, or whatever?”

In my opinion, what’s not exactly right about that question is that it introduces a layer of abstraction and reflection that is not inappropriate but does serve to remove me from the experience.

When I realized surfing was a religious experience for me, I tried to be more consciously grateful and adoring in the water:

God thank you for this day, this place, this time, this board, this body, this ocean.

Thank you for the glory of these primal energies, borne from afar to empower even me to walk on water and fly as to heaven.

That’s not a bad prayer. But I truly believe this is a better one:

Wooooooohoooooooooooo!

The Good News of the freedom and salvation brought into the world by the one through whom God created all things means—at least to me, at least in (nontrivial) part—that engaging the world and our experiences of it for their own sake is also holy, faithful, prayerful.

As an answer to why I love surfing, “Because: Jesus” isn’t wrong.

But if I treat it like it’s my only answer, it’s more likely to stunt faith-filled conversation than nurture it, at this time when the rep of followers of Christ is especially tarnished.

And if it’s my first answer, then I’ve missed the point of surfing, which, again, and I cannot stress this enough, is “Because: Woooooooooooooo! Whhhooooooaaaaaaa!!”

I may be wrong in my belief that such a position still sees God in all things rather than making all things god(s).

I may be wrong in my belief that such a position opens a door that more people will walk through toward faith than will be swept away from it by a sea of disconnection or indifference.

But if I really am among the “first fruits,” I need to look and feel the part.

Lots of practices can help me get there—and I’ll take all the help I can get.

Mahalo.