In over our heads
a story about the current (sort of)
A previous version of this essay originally appeared in my newsletter in October of 2021. For the next few months, I’m going to be interspersing new essays with older ones, so that my past material has a permanent place to live on the internet. (Scroll to the bottom for new news!)
“Shit. Oh, dammit!”
My 75-year-old Zimbabwean friend, Jacquie, is sliding herself down the bank into the river while I tread water a few feet out.
“I told you it was cold,” I say. “We don’t have to do it. I don’t want you to get hypothermia.”
“No,” she answers between deep breaths as she sinks further in. “It’s good for us.”
She pushes herself out into the middle of the river, and we set off on our half-mile swim downstream to the jetty at the bottom of her garden.
Jacquie comes to the yoga class I teach in the meadow behind our village pub every Wednesday and once, on a hot day, we got the idea to swim down to her house afterwards. It’s September now, and the water isn’t really warm anymore, but we’re still swimming. Jacquie has a neon-orange inflatable drybag that holds our clothes, and she clutches it to her while she floats. I roll over onto my back and let the current take me while I watch the sun diffuse through the willow trees lining the bank.
“I’m so glad we did this,” she says every few meters. Her voice is muffled; I can only just hear her with my ears under the water.
“So am I,” I call back.
From the river, we get a peek into the lives of the people who live in all the big houses lining the High Street of our village. We pass by garden after garden - each one different: little docks with rowboats attached. Rope swings hanging from willow branches. Elegant seating arrangements set up on spotless decking. One stands out because the owners have built a giant chain-link fence at the bottom. Jacquie says she heard they found a couple of teenagers having sex in their garden in the middle of the summer, and they built what we call “The Cage” to keep them out.
“I would have just sprayed them with a hose,” she says.
“I feel like they’re abusing their river-garden privileges,” I say. “You can’t even see the water.” Jacquie agrees.
At her garden - the second to last one before you leave the village - we push her grandchildren’s kayaks out of the way and climb the ladder onto the jetty. I get out first, pausing in the sun to dry myself by the picnic table. Jacquie follows me, moving slowly, worried about her blood pressure.
“I’m going to go and make us a cup of tea,” she says. She’ll get changed, too. I can sit in my wet swimsuit for ages, but Jacquie needs to warm herself up quickly. Last time the water was this cold, she had to walk around her sprawling garden dozens of times before the feeling came back into her feet.
When she comes back down to the river in her blue and green kaftan, beads of water still dripping from the ends of her silver hair, we sit down at the table near the water to drink our tea.
On our swims over the summer, we’ve learned a lot about each other: Jacquie is a student of Tibetan Buddhism; she became curious about it 25 years ago when she found out she had breast cancer (“the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says). I’ve told her about my Southern Baptist upbringing, and the charismatic church I have just left after 10 years. Today, I tell her that everything used to seem so black and white, but now all I can see is shades of grey. Jacquie sets down her teacup and uses her hands to describe a diagram to me that a monk drew for her two decades ago. With her fingers, she makes the shapes of inverted triangles, side-by-side. Each one, she says, represents a different religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism.
“At the bottom, at the tip, is where the fundamentalists sit - they’re very far away from each other. But when you get to the top, that’s where you find the mystics. The Jewish mystics are here,” she tells me, pointing to one of the tips of the invisible triangle she’s drawn in the air. “And the Christian mystics are here,” she points to the tip of the one beside it. The two are touching. “When you get down to it, we’re all talking about the same things.”
I close my eyes as I sip my tea, and picture myself five years ago: young and fervent, my desperation for certainty and my denial about how much energy it took to ignore my doubt twisted in my chest like the trunks of the ancient river willows. I imagine that version of me sitting here with Jacquie - how I would have had a silent script running through my head, telling me what to say now, how to save my friend. I think of the verses that would have scrolled across the marquee of my thoughts, the scriptures from the Romans Road, all the simple, sure answers to life’s unanswerable questions. I think of every word of every sermon that drew a hard line between Jacquie and me - that put me securely on one side of what was right, and her on the other.
I look down at my hands curled around Jacquie’s floral teacup, and at my bare legs, long and tanned and still sparkling with beads of river water. I look up at the walnut tree sheltering us as the breeze rustles its leaves – we’ll have to mind its fallen shells as we walk back toward Jacquie’s house later; some of the broken ones are so sharp they’ll slice your feet wide open. I lower my chin to look at Jacquie across the picnic table from me, her hands fluttering as she talks, her kaftan pulled tight around her, her eyes twinkling in the midday sun.
And I think, not for the first time, that if anyone here needed saving - if anyone here has been saved - it’s me.
In two months, a group of soulful women will gather in Suffolk, England for the Sanctuary retreat, and I’ve got a couple of exciting updates!
One of my many favourite parts of hosting Sanctuary is putting together a gift for each attendee. And one of the most exciting things I’m sourcing this year is a surprise creation by Jane at Feathers + Wings. Jane actually attended the very first Sanctuary retreat in 2019, so being able to gift our attendees with something lovingly made by her feels like a full circle moment.
I also have some EXTREMELY EXCITING food-related Sanctuary news I’ll be sharing with you soon that I’ve been sitting on for a while. I’ll just say this: we’ll be eating like kings.
Is all this making you feel like you really wish you were going to be there? Well good, because there are still a couple of beds available, and I would absolutely love to welcome you to our 16th-century farmhouse in the English countryside. There will be yoga, sauna, wild-swimming, incredible food, guided meditation, and plenty of space and quiet for you to rest and remember how to hear yourself think. If you’re coming from outside of England, you’re not alone - half of our current attendees are too, and there’s still time to find flights. The house is a two-hour train journey from London, and I’m here for a Zoom call to answer any travel questions I can help you with. Here’s all the info, and here’s where to book with a £300 deposit.
When I say I’d be honoured to have you, I mean it.
xx
Faith
