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Dive Up or Down
 I wasn’t one who dove deep into the seas - neither Atlantic nor Pacific nor the shores, say in Palm Beach or Delray or Cape Cod or the waves of Santa Barbara or Punta del Este, those forever beaches where it didn’t matter one’s skin color. In the effort of my youth, one didn’t pay attention how the sun was attacking one’s skin color. I was paying no attention in the 1950s and 60s because no one pointed out that skin might cause a cancer, at least when life began to twist and turn into old age.
I’ve got spots, and purple veins, thick or thin, (good or not for drawing blood from one of them) and most everything has turned into wrinkles and then there is cancer of various sorts. Some drastic. Some burned off. Some bumps and spots might become the cancer type. But, in those early days, I wonder why it was so important to get my skin as black as possible - it rarely came close to the beautiful skin colors of African Americans and Indians who raised me, or I met at dude ranches. I so envied the African Americans who didn’t have to worry about those things, and anyway, dark people were so beautiful whatever their skin color had behooved them, birthed in them that made them more at ease in the sun, I think.
As I got wiser, - often I’d display my sun darkness up against my African American friends, we would laugh, and still, I was weak, and my skin just didn’t turn anything like chocolate. So, whenever, in later years, I went to the beaches of Florida, I’d forget bathing suits and make an exception when in Delray, to get in the early morning sun to watch the turtles squaddle (my word) down to the ocean’s edge, having done their egg thing, so it was time for them to go back to life in the sea. It was a precious and spiritual moment.
Some folks like to spend their hours not over water but underwater searching for anything they might discover and possibly, with a fancy camera, could take photos of the beauty that lies below the top of the sea - although one has to dive deep to see the real truth that stretches far and wide under the salty waters where submarines or bodies wander through something like fat stiff snakes. There are always those swimmers in black with big things in their mouths so they can breathe sufficiently to be able to get deep eye views while kicking through herds of fish or to watch the crabs crawling on the floors of the bays and seas. Of course, fishing and collecting is a real treat for those who are so water crazy that they might spend the day - with a few breaks - in a world that on the whole is God’s glory and delight.
I guess there are two types - those who dance and kick and bubble below the seas, and the others who dance and deep breathe high in the sky, close to the moon or some planet that we really don’t know much about. We Americans have claimed the landing first on the moon in July 1969 - being the first of something in outer space. Since then, the skies have been entertained by so many strange looking floating mini hotels of a sort where a handful of experts, of a range of nationalities, have for 20 years filled the deep dark skies (having skidded away from the lights of our continent) with activity. The skies have been dancing with explorers trying to find out who was what and that trained astronauts are willing to spend long periods locked up in a tube, almost, and I can’t even wait to get out of a car or an airplane and get on solid ground again.
Now they say - I found out in my creeping old age - that space research has helped to understand cancer (I had that), Alzheimer’s disease (have avoided that so far, but it seems to creep on the horizon of my soul at 84) and GPS, 3D printers - well there is a little home up there in the skies trying to see what is good, bad or ugly or marvelous back on earth. The air I breathe doesn’t seem as friendly or even safe as the air that twists and twirls and blows and sweats outside of any kind of vehicle. Then those who are packed into a tube kind of confinement up in the skies, I admire with all my heart. No matter what nation is taking the risk and I wonder if they can take a brief puff of air when they are so far away from our earth. Maybe it all just floats around - because, if one believes, somewhere out there has got to be God’s heaven - since He owns the whole place.
But we also have a lot to gain diving into the sea which has a whole environment of beauty and importance in what goes on top. We deep southerners know about catfish, those sorts of nasty fish which creep below, cleaning the floors of ponds and lakes and at the same time, can be the best fish one can eat!!! It’s the best fish I’ve ever had when fried right, like in the popular Soul Fish restaurant in Memphis where I lunch with my best friend Deanie regularly. I don’t think they have these kind of scandalous floor creeping fish here in Uruguay, certainly not in the Rio de La Plata.
But a river has an entertainment of its own. When the waters flow out, it’s like sucking a deep breath, and goes halfway to Argentina and way out there where the giant ships cart things back and forth from Buenos Aires to the Palmira of Uruguay. It’s deeper there but the closer to our shores, one can have a soccer game in the middle of the river when the tides are out. People take out their fold up chairs with their mate thermos under their arms,( God forbid we have “mate” in Memphis!), to continue with that twice a day habit in schedules of those born here in Uruguay and has spread around some of the nearby countries relatively - and it’s the messiest (no kin to the soccer star Messi though, I’m sure being from Argentina, he “toma mate” twice a day) to clean up and stop of the sink, if you pour the used yerba (the basis of mate) down the drain - it will clog up eventually. You can imagine people probably dumping the yerba in the Rio after they have enjoyed their take. Mate people use it at times as a meal - even though it doesn’t have any “health” help.
It seems every day, God is opening another crack in the earth’s beautiful hidden places - like the NYTimes said, there are trillions of worlds under the sea, hiding and displaying creatures that are miracles so deep in the oceans that most of us don’t have the apparatus to be able to dive that deep as to see their ballet or their swoosh or their beauty. These things are not familiar to what our eyes have seen at some point. And when Jesus was on earth - did He know these discoveries as He hung out with fishing men? Did He know His father made the whole world and universe? How much of it was God’s intention, spreading of humans that have multiplied so extremely fast? In the days Jesus roamed there were about 300 million on earth - well according to some measurements.
What about the indigenous people of America? Ironically there are entire populations who had never heard of Jesus nor seen a church or Bible. I wonder if they were experts who could dive deep into the sea and discover so many things that our modern machinery doesn’t really give all the treasure and glory hidden deep in the seas, whether we see them or not. I wonder if there are seas or lake fish that have peculiar attitudes - like in the oceans there are towers of tube worms at a depth of 8200 feet and the NYTimes said that researchers are finding fascinating new cracks in the Earth’s crust which might make a difference - and poor Memphis catfish will stay in its muddy, dirty ponds and give those of us who grew up in the deep south, fishing for catfish in whatever pile of water in a pond still exists. They love those kinds of places.
Heat can kill fish. We are told fish get a little loopy when there isn’t enough oxygen to keep them puffing and swimming in their ballets. Remember how fish sort of have air wings that puff a bit and pulls them through the water? One way or the other, the damage we human’s do above the seas, the oceans, even the small water homes people have for their favorite fish in a modern house, need to be re-thought with efforts to try to keep all the fish that we don’t catch for our meals to at least be healthy and happy wherever they slip and slide and push and swim through the waters of this earth. God surely would be pleased with that. It’s up to us to give them a healthy environment wherever they are.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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