Kayaking as a Spiritual Practice

Years ago someone posted a photo of herself sitting in her new inflatable kayak in her living room.  She was so excited to have finally taken the plunge.  “I want one,” I said. “Do it,” she replied.  And so for years I imagined the day I would have my own kayak, or stand-up paddle board, no kayak.  No wait, maybe I won’t use it.  Who am I kidding?  I don’t have time to kayak.  Where would I even go?  Maybe someday we’ll move somewhere very near water where kayaking will be a thing I could do every morning …  Until late one evening this past spring, I took the plunge and bought my own inflatable kayak.    At first I saw it as a tool of adventure.  I would explore all of the waterways in the Bay Area.  I would go on day-long adventures across Northern California.  Or at least I would learn how to navigate the tides and currents of the San Francisco Bay, the most difficult body of water that is also nearest to me.  I studied the Bay Water Trail and the tide charts.  I obsessed about timing.  And I had good/bad kayak adventures, easy and hard, and a little bit harrowing, beautiful and ugly and almost always surprising.  It was fun and challenging.  Until one day I just wanted to kayak without the study and the drama and the most-of-the-day commitment, so I turned to Lake Chabot, one of our local reservoirs, which promised to be boring but easy.  And just like that kayaking changed for me.  It became a spiritual practice.   I go early in the morning, when the waters are their most still.  As I inflate my kayak in the parking lot, I am warmly greeted by the walkers and runners who use the path around the lake.  On the water there are just a few boats, folks who are fishing, sometimes another kayaker.  I know now to paddle to the fork on the right where it gets reedy.  That’s where the birds hang out, egrets and great blue herons, cormorants and ducks.  Last week I came upon a flock of white pelicans (not common in NorCal).  Another time I followed a group of otters across the lake.  There are songbirds in the trees on the shore and one morning a stag passed by on his way up the trail.   The adventure it turns out is in the quiet stillness. It’s in the mist rising from the water, the sun peeking over the hills, the way the lake changes as you go, rippling here, bubbling there, and over here smooth like glass.  It’s the hush and the chirruping.  It’s watching the way a bird takes off from the water when you’ve come too close, the sound of their wings in the air.  It’s the revelation in that first stroke away from shore that you are not going to sink because you are being held by the cosmos in this eternal moment. 

Breakfast with God

I have been trying to find my way into a regular morning spiritual practice for a long time.  Over the years it has proven to be anything but regular, taking on many different shapes.  I have sneaked out from my overfull house to settle myself on an old towel among the plants on our back deck.  I have chanted prayers in the car on the way to work, back from school drop-off, or headed to the pool.  I have snuck a whisper of prayer into a quick shower before the Zoom I am late for.  I have had the luxury of a long prayerful yoga session in the garden.  I have sat on my favorite stump overlooking the canyon of the regional park just up the hill, listening to the birds and the wind and the children. More recently I have been enjoying breakfast with God two days a week.  Those are the days that I commute one hour to the synagogue where I work, arriving around 8am.  When I first returned to working in the building after the pandemic, I tried to do a little prayer in my office.  I lit a candle, rotated my chair to face away from my desk, and set the timer on my meditation app, ready for some silence and morning gratitude.  After 5 or 10 or 15 minutes, I would pivot back, blow out the candle, and dig into breakfast and the morning’s emails.  It was efficient but not that satisfying.  In that space, the tasks of the day were nipping at my brain, nudging me to get started already. So one day, I migrated upstairs to the empty sanctuary.  And I brought my tea.  There I could pull up any chair, or find a spot on the floor, and breathe into the open holy space.  Before long I brought breakfast with my tea, and my meditation timer, and my prayers, and blended them into a new morning ritual of breakfast with God.  Some days there’s a lot of silence, or singing, a little bit of movement.  Other days there’s really just breakfast and the soothing comfort of being in the quiet company of an old friend.  

Finding Joy in the Trinity Alps

I went on my first solo camping trip this summer. Just a few days, to a favorite camping spot in the little visited wilderness of the Trinity Alps. In spite of decades of experience and a car loaded down with luxury gear for the middle-aged camper, I was unaccountably nervous. Until I hit the road and my body/soul immediately remembered why I camp, why I seek out the wilderness, why I need time alone. There was acute luxury in attending to only my needs for a time. There was a ridiculously spacious 3-person tent for one, eating out of the pot I cooked in, kayaking every day, stillness that made it possible to notice and then watch the woodpecker make their way up the tree and to observe the encounter between a lizard and a caterpillar. And I missed my children, my camping buddies of the last 20 years, acutely: the noise and chaos of them, their companionship, our shared laughter, games and adventure. Really I missed the boys they were before they became the men they are now. Then I missed my Gram Phyl and the way she taught me to listen to birds in the morning, and my own childhood. As I lay there in my hammock looking up into the canopy of pines, I felt the whole expanse of myself over my 50 years, all held in one moment, complete with all of the feelings. Rabbi Alan Lew writes that, “Joy is a deep release of the soul, and it includes death and pain. Joy is any feeling fully felt, any experience we give our whole being to.” I realized it was joy I was feeling. The joy of being alive, deeply at one with the universe, and whole/holy. Spiritual direction is a practice that helps us attune to the joy in our lives. If you encounter folks who could benefit from attending to that attunement, I hope you’ll invite them to consider my spiritual direction practice. And if you are looking for that opportunity, I have many wonderful colleagues to recommend. I’m also happy to trade camping stories, great ideas for where to camp, and gear recommendations.