For a while, I was obsessed with surfing.

I don’t know how or why it happened. Maybe it was the sustained excitement of a perfect little wave caught bodysurfing  on the coast of North Carolina.

Maybe it was one of the many surfing movies I caught on video tape.

I don’t really know.

All I know is that I thought it was one of the most beautiful and free sports I’d ever seen.

I even had a surfboard for a while that I bought in a pawn shop in dry land Atlanta .

The surfboard was never put in the water…by me.

I guess that I was kind of a poseur…a wannabe.

Oh well…the intentions were good.

I watched “Chasing Mavericks” yesterday.  It’s a movie about Jay Moriarty, a surfer who surfed a huge surfbreak called Mavericks at a young age.

It’s a good movie….not a great movie…but a good movie that had one section that really made me think.

In the movie, the main character and his mentor, Salty, are paddling out in the ocean, training for the challenge that lies ahead for the young main character, Jay.

They are over the Monterey Trench and Salty asks if Jay feels that the water is getting colder.  Jay answers that he knows the reason is that the water is very deep at that point…and Salty remarks that he used to like to come out to that section of the ocean to just sit…to just feel it …to feel the abyss.

I couldn’t help but think that all we really know is what’s on the surface.

We may attempt to understand the “abyss”…but all we can relate to is what we can see and feel.  As much as we may strain to understand what lies below and around us, it’s only the things we can put our hands on that we’re willing to trust as being real.  We need some nail holes to be able to relate.

A surfing movie like “Chasing Mavericks” doesn’t ask for or deserve any deep theological ponderings.  It deserves to be taken at its own merits…

but…to feel the abyss…to wonder about any of the deeper meanings…to be amazed at what might lay below the surface of any of this life….to trust that there is something different and better beyond all this…that’s an interesting pursuit.

This movie had some beautiful moments.

It wasn’t an instant classic, whatever that may mean.  I think I was more moved by “Big Wednesday”…but it was a good movie…a good surf movie.

I’d recommend it …safe for the whole family.