Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 January 2004 16:59:16
Skinny dipping. Not a subject I can ever remember hearing a sermon on. Shame, 'cos it undoubtedly has immense spiritual value. No? Well, I'll let Douglas Coupland 'explain'.
I peel my clothes and step into the pool beside the burbling stream, onto polished rocks, and water so clear it seems it might not even be really there.
My skin is grey, from lack of sun, from lack of bathing. And yes, the water is so cold, this water that only yesterday was locked as ice up on the mountaintops. But the pain from the cold is a pain that does not matter to me. I strip my pants, my shirt, my tie, my underwear and they lie strewn on the gravel bar next to my blanket.
And the water from the stream above me roars.
Oh, does it roar! Like a voice that knows only one message, one truth - never-ending, like the clapping of hands and the cheers of the citizens upon the coronation of the king, the crowds of the inauguration, cheering for hope and for the one voice that will speak to them.
Now - here is my secret:
I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt i shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God - that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.
I walk deeper and deeper into the rushing water. My testicles pull up into myself. The water enters my belly button and it freezes my chest, my arms, my neck, it reaches my mouth, my nose, my ears and the roar is so loud - this roar, this clapping of hands.
These hands - the hands that heal; the hands that hold; the hands we desire because they are better than desire.
I submerge myself in the pool completely. I grab my knees and forget gravity and I float within the pool and yet, even here, I hear the roar of water, the roar of clapping hands.
These hands - the hands that care, the hands that mould; the hands that touch the lips, the lips that speak the words - the words that tell us we are whole.
From 'Life After God' by Douglas Coupland.