I recall quite vividly my trepidation to jump into lake Champlain. I must’ve been eight because it was a dock in Grand Isle, at Camp Abanaki, it was my first summer there. I spent a week there with a counselor who we’d learn later took advantage of some campers, but not me. He was nice enough. I remember that he’d stay up secretly playing Grand Theft Auto II on an original playstation, I thought that was cool. That’s all I remember about him, and he had big hair. He reminded me of some 90s MTV celebrity I also can’t remember. I think his name was Shane. But that’s neither here nor there.

The water was cold, which I knew from wading, and it took something like courage to jump into it. I realized quickly that if I thought about jumping I would put it off and put it off and put it off. The only way I would actually jump was to utterly clear my mind and do it before I could think about doing it, to be at the mercy of gravity, and therefore helpless, as I realized what I had done.

This is an important lesson I have not done a great job following through with across the span of my life. I tend to think and think and think and put off and put off and put off and not commit because I’m unwilling not to think. I must think, I can’t help it most of the time.

My joining the church has been as close to a life choice at the mercy of gravity as I’ve done, and it feels as rewarding as swimming in summer. There are such rewards to being utterly trusting in the forces of the universe to carry away in warmth the willing to be swept.

Of course there are bad forces in this world that might carry you towards rocky shores, but I don’t think this is that, at least I trust that it isn’t.