Breathing Under Water:
A Journey Towards Wholeness
A 9-week series
This summer at Faith UMC, we are moving through a new series, Breathing Under Water, based on a book by Fr. Richard Rohr. In that book, Rohr helps readers see the wisdom of the Twelve Steps not only as a path for recovery from addiction, but also as a deeply Christ-following path of honesty, surrender, healing and grace. As we journey together toward wholeness, we remember that we can breathe, even breathe underwater, because the breath of God is always with us.
On July 19, we continue to explore Breathing Under Water in worship, as the Rev. Dr. Laura Norvell preaches on the hope that finds us first.
“Sometimes faith begins as the smallest willingness to imagine that the way things are right now is not the only way they can ever be,” she says in her sermon. That hope is accompanied by hard work, because “recovery is work. Healing is work. Repair is work. Truth-telling is work.​​​​​​​
​Learning to live differently is work. But the work begins in love, not in shame. The work begins in embrace, not in rejection.” In the process, we discover that “the good news is not that we have found our way perfectly to God. The good news is that God has found us.”
This summer’s worship series is based on Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, a book by Father Richard Rohr. The introduction features this poem by Carol Bialok from her book, Coral Castles.
And then one day,
(I still don't know how it happened) the sea came.
Without warning.
Without welcome, even
Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand
like wine,
less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death.
And while I thought the sea crept higher, till it reached my door.
I built my house by the sea.
Not on the sands, mind you; not on the shifting sand.
And I built it of rock.
A strong house.
by a strong sea.
And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbors.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences.
Respectful, keeping our distance,
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always, the fence of sand our barrier,
always, the sand between.
And I knew then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling you stop being neighbors.
Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance, neighbors.
And you give your house for a coral castle,
And you learn to breathe underwater.