for an audio reading and reflection
The Deep End
In the RAF during the war when they were training pilots
and had to teach them how to swim
so they wouldn’t drown as so many did when they were shot down
over the Channel, they divided up the swimmers
and the nonswimmers and put them into groups, and the swimmers
had to teach the nonswimmers and the nonswimmers
had to learn or they’d both end up digging latrines the rest of the war.
And one young pilot, a swimmer, who later became
a Church of England priest and wrote three slim, elegant, intricately-
argued books about the infinite mercy of God—
he’s the one who tells this story–he realized that his students
were often flailing and sinking because they were trying too hard,
they were afraid, and so the thing to do
was just to horse around, to play, splashing and throwing a ball,
gradually moving deeper and deeper, more and more
buoyed up, until when the week was over his students could swim
and he could teach and they all were cleared to fly.
Many never returned.
So it is with grace.