Swimming in Our Sunday Best

After living on a tropical island for three months I have seen the beach for the first time!

 

Teleng Ria Beach, Pacitan

As an American I have a certain concept of what it means to go to the beach. Bathing suit clad families splashing in the water and picnics spread out on beach blankets come to mind. But on this day, a day out with the teachers from my school and their families, the scene looked a little different.

Can you spot the differences?

I knew that I wasn’t going to see any teachers in their bathing suits that day. But having at least planned to change into yoga pants and an old t-shirt before going in the water, I was taken a little by surprise when everyone started wading into the waves in the same clothes they had been wearing when we had boarded the bus at 4:30 that morning. I stood, toes digging into the sand, in my skirt and t-shirt. I looked out at the families happily splashing in the waves, fathers in shorts and t-shirts, children in the casual clothes they had come in, and mothers wearing colorful jilbabs, long skirts or pants, and long sleeved shirts. And then I was invited to join them.

My counter part teacher and her family playing in the water.

Wearing what I might have worn to church on Sunday back in the States, I joined my Indonesian friends in the water. We splashed, we laughed, we corralled small children back towards the shallow water. All the while I tried to keep my skirt on and thought about how I had never experienced the beach quite like this before.

Before…

After! (With my counter part teacher and family)

All I had to do was look down the beach and see people swimming in their regular clothes to know that there was something different about this place. But at the same time the smiles and the laughter and the joy of families enjoying the sun and the waves was so familiar. That’s often how Indonesia feels – so very different and so very familiar at the same time.

A look down the beach.

Sun bathing.

I want to share a little piece of my personal history with you to help you understand what a beautiful experience our trip to the beach was. Almost two years ago in the waves off the Gulf Coast of Florida, I reaffirmed my baptism in front of a group of college students who I dearly love and count as some of my closest friends. We had spent that afternoon playing messy games (that involved digging in the sand, cheese puffs, and catchup), and were still dressed in our team colors. As the sun set, that group of wild and crazy college students cheered joyfully for each person who went out to be baptized.

With my friends two years ago in Florida.

My friends yesterday!

I know that not all my readers are Christian, and I respect that deeply. But the picture I want to create is how that group of my goofy American friends laughing and playing and celebrating in that ocean is connected to my new Indonesian friends who laughed and played and celebrated in the waves yesterday. To me the ocean has become like a promise. It is a promise that across miles and miles and unfathomable depths of history, experience, and culture – across incredible differences – we are all still connected. It might take years and years, but it is the same water cycling throughout the world, the same water that we swam and played and bathed in. And even though we are sometimes so far apart, there is a joy and a delight in the sun and the waves that brings us together. I wish that you could have been with me at the beach yesterday! I wish you could have seen the smiles and the joyful faces and recognized as I did that, although we may be so very different in some ways, we are so very similar in others.

 

Classy Lady