Down the cliffs to the black sand of the Pa’iloa beach, and right on the shore, was an opening. Not a comfortable one for me. It was just big enough to fit my body, but I had to bend down and contort myself a bit to make my way through it. Once inside and able to stand, I realized I was in a small lava tube that sat right at the shoreline of the beach. It was absolutely stunning. Black rocks wide enough to sit on and black sand everywhere, all as a result of lava flows hundreds of years before. An opening to the ocean let the Pacific in, waves crashing and settling right at my feet.

PHOTO BY FLAVIO GASPERINI ON UNSPLASH

I won’t lie. It was scary. I’m not a swimmer. Those classes I took 30 years ago, without a lot of access to pools and large bodies of water in my everyday life, mean very little to me now. And so the idea that I was even in this tiny space with water coming in and out made me question myself. It was pretty and everything, but it seemed dangerous. A large swell could fill this little cave with water at any moment, and I’d be left with very few options to protect myself beyond trusting my body or mind to do what they need to do to get me out. Before I knew it, I was already in a space of worry and regret that I’d even bothered to go in.

But the word ‘trust’ stirred me in ways I wasn’t expecting. I was reminded of a book I’d been reading off an on over the last year called Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. In it, she offers these words about surrender:

And what happens if we just let go? Like dolphins who beach themselves on shore to eat, and trust the tide to bring them back into the water… What would it take to tune in with our environment enough to be in flow with the Earth, instead of in struggle against it.

PHOTO BY CHRIS CHAN ON UNSPLASH

As I began to reflect on the immediacy of my worry and lack of trust, and Alexis’ hopes for our surrender in her incredible book, I noticed my body start to settle into the moment. My breathing slowed. I started listening to the water and the sounds the waves made at different points of contact with the rocks and the walls of the lava tube I was finally able to sit down and rest in. I sat on one of those rocks for a long time, watching the water and feeling the waves as they ebbed and flowed. Truthfully, it was a lot to take in all at once. And it was okay that it turned out to be simultaneously tranquil and still a bit terrifying in the place where the waves and the land met.

Isn’t it not unlike the place where many of us find ourselves in our work of belonging and meaning-making?

Be well, dear ones.