It was late in the year, but with surfing that’s not such a bad thing. The water may be cold, sometimes brutally so, but the waves are usually stronger and October days can be beautiful. Also, you can go to the beach around noon and there isn’t a crowd in the water. In fact, on this day, there were only eight or so people on the beach; one sweeping the sand with a metal detector, a couple of joggers, a woman madly knitting from her beach chair, the others reading or just sitting in the sun.
We were in the water riding whatever it would offer. There were some good waves, most were small and a little weak, but the wind was shifting and the tide was coming in. As a Zenned-out clerk in a Huntington Beach surf shop had said to us, “It’s okay. Just get in the water. The waves will come.”
I was surfing with Terry, my oldest surf buddy. We had met in seminary and had once served together as chaplains in a small hospital in Queens. He had been a talented priest, but had left ordained ministry to work on Wall Street some years before.
The Church, often an institution of grasping people seeking not so much salvation but a salve for their egos, is a difficult bubble in which to work, especially for those like Terry, who are of a bookish, creative nature. Clergy can be hyper-critical of one another, many of the laity are deeply unhappy with the emptiness of contemporary Christianity, and it's easy to get lost in a non-spiritual morass. Terry, rather than risk what was left of his soul, decided to just “leave the whole dang deal" one day. He didn’t seem to regret or miss it. He had a much better salary, weekends off, drove a car that was newer than a decade old, lived on the top floor of a doorman building in New York City, and had what appeared to be a very contented life. I was sorry he had left, though, as people like him were and are few and far between in professional ministry.
We had planned the surf trip for an earlier, happier portion of the year, but I was delayed by business with the church in which I was working and then by the death of my mother-in-law. For Terry, well, there had been something else. By the time we made the trip, we were both ready to find some cure for the radical change that had occurred in the world and the staggering loss to many of those whom we knew.
We drove from Long Beach to San Juan Capistrano the first night, when the two of us, both used to getting up before dawn and both still on Eastern time, found ourselves wide awake at 2 a.m. and felt that a high speed run in a rental convertible up and down the Pacific Coast Highway would answer, stopping before dawn to get donuts from a cheery Mexican man who chain-smoked cigarettes and rhapsodized about the waves. At least, we think he did, as he didn't speak English and my Spanish is, well, “elementary”. It was a pleasant dawn, especially as it seemed that everywhere else we had been there was a sense of percolating tension.
The next night was a little worse when, after a day of indifferent surfing and some exploration of the local area, we found ourselves in a hole of a place just off the PCH, listening to bad music and finding old things about which to laugh. The evening took a darker turn when, in a moment of quixotic impulse, I scolded some other patrons for roughly handling a waitress when they felt their order had taken too long. When the loudest responded as I had hoped, with vulgarities and an ill-expressed threat, I was prepared to see if I could still remember Gunnery Sergeant Jackson’s half-dozen ways to render someone unconscious. Actually, I was just trying to remember the most painful one to inflict.
Terry stood behind me and I expected him to reason with both of us. Instead, he simply said, “I’ve got your back, Chief.” For some reason, the idea of facing down two apparently deranged middle-aged surfers seemed more daunting to the loud-mouth and his friends than it had before and everything ended rather quietly and quickly.
“Well, that was stupid”, I recall noting.
“Yeah, for them. It never pays to be rude.”
After that, we decided that spending our energies surfing made more sense and would reduce the chance of our being either jailed or hospitalized. It also allowed us, in those breaks in the surf, to try to put our new world in perspective.
Terry: What was the flight like?
Me: There were only five people on the whole plane.
Terry: Weird.
Me: And the stewardesses…
Terry: Flight attendants.
Me: …flight attendants were kind of odd. They watched us like we were going to do something.
Terry: Yeah, I know that look. Everyone on the street seems to have it now. In the office, everyone stops talking when a plane flies overhead. Doesn’t matter if they’re talking to someone in front of them or a customer on the phone, the whole place goes silent.
Me: How’s that going?
Terry: We lost a lot of computer files…well, all of the files, paper and electronic. I mean, we lost the whole building. But we’re going to have the temporary office in Long Island for a while. Maybe forever. I can’t take the subway to work anymore, but I drive in with the surfboard on top of the car. I can get in the water at the end of the day. At least for another few weeks. Then, who knows...? Here comes a set.
It was a good set of waves, too. Terry always takes the first one and I take the second one. There is no reason for it other than he thinks the first one is better and I think it’s the second. For the rest of the day we didn’t speak as the waves came in as they always do, one after the other, in the marvelous and compelling rhythm of nature, and we concentrated on getting the best rides we could.
Finally, when the water temperature was beginning to make our feet and legs too numb to stand, we sat on the sand and talked about how, once we could move, we should get a couple of cups of hot chocolate from a beach-side vendor who knew just what to sell to hypothermic surfers. Maybe a few cups.
Terry: You know what I found in my sock drawer?
Me: Socks?
Terry: Yeah, and my collar.
Me: Your clergy collar? Plastic or linen?
Terry: It was that nasty starched linen we had to wear back in the day. I got asked to help out at [a parish near Wall Street]. They’re still doing burials.
Me: I heard. How long’s it been since…?
Terry: Awhile. Seems like a time to get back into it.
Me: The Church or the surf?
Terry: The Church. Then the surf. God help me, but after dealing with The Church again, I’ll really need the surf.
Me: I know you're not looking for advice, but buy a plastic collar.
Thus, a still, small prayer of mine was answered as a talented and caring priest, who watched his building collapse and his co-workers traumatized on a sunny Tuesday in September, found his calling again.
[Excerpt from The Waterman, and Other Characters, all rights reserved © 2016]