Night swimming

 The temperature here is Muscat has hit mid-forties Celsius but the humidity is still bearable and the die-hards( including me of course!) at the university are still having lunch outside. I came home from my German class tonight, and sat outside having a glass of bubbly and pondering the last few days. The rose moon of June is magnificent and I look forward to doing some nightswimming with the loved one under the full moon tomorrow. How romantic can one get :)

The sea is just amazing at the moment. On both the evenings of the weekend, we went down at sunset time and just luxuriated in the water. It is the perfect temperature.
 There were some families on the beach and also a couple of little pockets of children in the water, who soon disappeared at the call to prayer and the promise of food. After that it was just us, the shadows of the fishing boats on the sand, the watchful moon and the winking street lamps coming on, casting their rippling lights over the gently moving water. Oh, I mustn't forget the surprise of  little schools of fish jumping, and the odd turtle bobbing up for air.

There is a time when the sky and the sea are both almost white and ethereal, and we feel like the only people in the world.

As I lay drifting in the water losing myself in the sky, I remembered the story of Jesus healing the lame man at the pool of Bethesda.
It was the sermon preached on the day I described in my entry, 'a trick of light'. I have been thinking of it a lot since then. That paralysed man had been unable to walk for 38 years, and anyone would have thought it was obvious that he would want to get better; yet Jesus asks him,' Do you want to be well?'

Why does Jesus ask him this? This is how I see it. Because for anyone of us to change, heal and move towards our highest and best selves, we have to be seriously willing. Or as my healer mother used to say,'Willing and desperate!'. Many of us are addicted to our own destructive ways, negative though patterns, the thinking  that lead us to fall into the same hole again and again eventhough we know better. We don't want to let go of the physical ailments that earn us sympathy and time and care from our colleagues, friends and family.

We have to give ourselves permission to evolve and let go and break the moulds we have set through years of habit and conditioning. I often ask myself why we hold onto these things that do not serve us. Fear of the unknown I guess, just part of our challenge of being human.

I lay floating in the sea, which held me like a safe hammock, and whispered to the sky, yes, yes, yes. I want to be well. I want all to be well. And I realised that in saying those words, it was already a reality.