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“I’m not at risk of drowning, but I can’t swim in a straight line.” So I told my swimming instructor at the Jewish community center last spring. Since that first lesson, my skills have grown. I can even (kind of) do a kick turn. But the real gift has been the people I encounter at the JCC in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
During tonight’s women-only swim hour, I see a mother and her adult daughter with special needs. They are water-walking in a lane, holding hands. Another woman, wearing long sleeves, leggings and a hair wrap, swims a freestyle so exuberant it splashes water at least two lanes away. Next to me, a woman with porcelain, wrinkled skin becomes a swan as she swims the backstroke, her fingers curved with the loose grace of a dancer. At the edge of my lane, by the stairs, two Asian girls huddle giggling, while their caregiver tends to a younger sibling in the shallow pool. Next to the caregiver, a young woman learns to float, her skin so dark it glows.
At the end of my laps, I take off my slightly too-tight goggles and stick my head under the surface. As the cool water soothes the suctioned-cupped skin around my eyes, I smile. This. This pool. This air in my lungs and blood in my veins. This group of odds-and-ends people. Somehow, we belong to one another, baptized into community by the JCC pool.
For a second, I see it so clearly – and then the vision fades, as the things that divide us come into focus: the ways I fail daily to love my neighbor, especially those who think, look and act differently than me. In Lent, we mourn our missteps just as we cling to the holy glimpses God gives us of what is to come.
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