Walking on Water

There is a special misery reserved for those caught on a little boat in the middle of the sea late at night when a storm is raging. True, there was no rain, but on this night the angry wind swept across unguarded water and threw up muscular waves to toss and knock and soak us. There was a little moonlight, and by it I could see my friends huddled low, heads down, shivering, worrying over the growing pool in the bottom of the boat. What else could we do?

Then we saw something worse. Off to one side there was a wave that leapt up and stood still, or so it seemed. Or was it the fin of a huge fish cresting the water, plowing directly for us?

But no—it was a man, or the shape of a man. A ghost! The ghost of a sailor lost in this place, a sailor sent to warn us of our doom or else tug us with him into the depths forever. Others saw it. Someone screamed, and another. It drifted over the water, coming—yes, definitely coming toward us, though slowly, cruelly, full of deadly anticipation. A great swell lifted the figure, then the trough as it swept past brought it low, as if it were gliding on the water like a child on snow. Now there could be no question: a ghost was approaching. I began to see eyes, gleaming eyes in the moonlight, and the terror rose into my throat. I told myself: I would not scream. But yes, soon I must scream.

But now, the sound of laughter! And I saw the head of the ghost hop and lean with it. It was giddy laughter, belly-full, human and warm. And familiar! Could it be…?!

It was. “Woah now!” he shouted. “Buck up! Buck up!” He was twenty-five or thirty feet from the boat, still walking, and there could be no question that it was our Lord, the one we followed.  “It’s me,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

The sound of that voice, familiar and kind, and especially of laughter, spontaneous and unconfined, drained the scream from me. But a tingling of fear remained, and it had a new sharpness. He stopped. At least, he stopped walking toward us, and I saw his two feet, bare, pressing down on the water. He rose and fell gently as the waves slid past beneath.

I am an impulsive man. Others know this; I know this. And as so often before, I was the first to speak. “Lord,” I called, “if it really is you—“ I fished for something worth saying— “order me to come out to you on the—” I hesitated— “on the water.”

His laughter again, and I saw now that he draped his arm across his belly as if to hold it in. “I do so!” he said at last, waving me out. “Come on!”

What have I done? I thought. But I went to the gunwale and gripped it. The waves were no calmer, and the boat still rocked and shook. I got a leg over, a cold, wet leg. I got the other leg over and sat there stupidly on the precipice, the waves rising up to lick my feet, my ankles. It seemed my friends were standing well back from me. What have I done?

When do you drop from the side of a boat—when the waves are far down below you or when they’re up over your calves? I waited until they were midway, and I pushed myself off.

I landed with two bright slaps upon the surface of the sea. Immediately I stumbled forward, reached out my hand to catch myself, and it too pressed against the water as if it had almost been firm ice. But this ice was tepid and flowing and moving and would not stay still, and it was dark and beneath it was—. But I’d better not think that way.

I raised myself and stood there a few moments finding my balance. It was hard to do, with everything rising and falling everywhere at all times. A voice muttered something above me, and I took the chance of glancing up over my shoulder. My friends leaned out over the gunwale, looking down at me, wonder and fear in their eyes. The boat (or I) had drifted, too close, and it loomed overhead. I had better step away. Easier said than done.

I stepped. It wasn’t so bad as I had imagined. The water was not so much like ice as like strangely flowing dirt. One could, thankfully, gain purchase on it: one’s foot would not slide, but would drive against the surface. One could climb it like a sand dune—at least, a moving sand dune—now climbing, now descending.

Twenty-five feet to my Lord. Far too far. 

But now I was crossing it. One step. Two steps. What was so strange was that the wind would blow a wave beside me into spray, and the spray would hit my face and wet my beard and my eyelashes, and I could taste its cool saltiness; but then this same wave would slide beneath me, and once underfoot it was firm and un-water-like.

Three steps. Four steps. There he was, smiling, still chuckling even, with arms a little wide as if to greet—or catch—me. I could not remember my own first baby steps, of course, but it must have been something like this. I thought of my own son and his first steps, stumbling proudly and carefully toward me, and I waiting proudly and patiently for him.

Ten steps. Twelve steps. I was getting the hang of it. Only twice now had I put my hand down, and only for a moment.

My eyes were mostly on the water, but I sensed now that I could be no more than ten feet away from him. Then something happened.

I looked up for him and found he was not there. Wait, no, he was there, but a wave had come and lifted him six, seven feet up while dropping me low, so that his feet were a little above eye level. And at this moment the wind burst and roared with a fresh fierceness so that all the waves turned almost to breakers. A splash hit me on my shin—this was what did it. It hit me on my shin and I felt the coldness and wetness of it, running down my ankle, now on the top of my foot. What have I done?! I thought anew, now with rising panic. Water on the top of my foot, not on the bottom where it was supposed to be in this crazy, wild moment. I felt my heart bump hard in my chest as the sea sucked my foot a little way into its cold, dark maw.

There’s a world of difference between a water that stops at the edge of your toes and water into which your toes have disappeared. There’s a world of difference between a water that presses up against the bottom of your foot and a water that presses down on the top of your foot. Once it had started it had to keep going.

It happened all in a second. My right foot was ankle-deep, now calf-deep. I put my hand out to steady myself, but the water now was not like dirt but like dust, and my fingers disappeared. The wind roared yet louder and the waves around me all clapped their hands and shook their heads like Coliseum crowds, rocking backward and forward, jeering my calamity. I drove my right knee into the water but I knew it would not hold, and it didn’t. And now my left foot too began to plunge.

“Lord, save me!” I shouted. I was falling forward, and I saw the foaming sea rising up to swallow my face.

But a strong hand gripped me by the shoulder of my tunic, and now another hand came up under the other arm. I was being lifted. My knee wrenched out from the water. The left foot rose out, the sea strangely pooling beneath the skin of my sole as if it wanted nothing to do anymore with other parts of my foot. The right foot came out and stood there firm on the surface of the water.

And there was his face, level with mine, smiling, but—I thought—a little sad. No, he was no ghost, of course. I could smell the familiar smell of my old friend, though in another place I might not have thought about it: a little salty, a little sweaty, and with a scent of bread and fish from yesterday’s meal. I threw my arms around him—not, I like to say, for safety but for thankfulness and affection.

After a moment he pulled away, gripped my shoulders—we still rose and fell with the waves—and shook his head. “You micro-truster,” he said, using a funny phrase I’d heard him use before. “What made you doubt?” I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t meet his eyes, but looked again at the waves that had betrayed me. I saw now that the dawn was just beginning and the sea didn’t look quite so fierce as before.

He kept his arm around me as we walked back to the boat. I waited for a wave to raise me up to the gunwale, then threw my leg over, and the lads helped me tumble inside. He stepped in a moment later.

He looked around at us for a moment, then at the sunrise scene around us. 

All at once the wind ran out of breath. Within a few seconds the waves, too, had lost their verve, and sunk slowly into a great, quiet oneness. The boat rocked once more, gently, then stood still on a sea showing no more than few final ripples. 

Why had I doubted? How could I have had the brass to get out of the boat but not enough to walk the whole way to him? Is faith ever a fixed thing, or is it a wave of its own, rising and falling, never quite one thing or another—solid or liquid—but always a harmony of hopes and doubts?

And I had other questions. Why in heaven’s name didn’t he stop the waves before I ever got out of the boat? If he could stop them after, why not before? Did he want me to walk on water or not, to founder or not? If he wanted me to succeed at this (impossible) task, why couldn’t he have made it a little easier? And why was he walking on the water in the first place? Within a year after this event I had seen him fly up to heaven, and I had heard from Philip how he was transported many miles in an instant. Why not fly to the boat, or just transport himself there? Why walk?

My telling you about this makes me think of one more thing I’ve long forgotten. Later there was another moment on a boat with the Lord calling to us. It was after he rose, and we’d been fishing, and he told us to fish on the other side, and John realized it was him and told me, though I was already pretty sure. I thought to myself, “Maybe he wants me to walk on the water again. Maybe I’ll walk to him on the beach.” But then I thought, “This is different. He’s not on the water himself.” But I looked at the sea—it was calm and daylight—and I knew I could walk on it if I wanted to, if he wanted me to. But I decided this was a swimming job after all and got ready to dive in. But then just as I was falling through the air, I thought—this is the thing I’ve forgotten until this moment—I thought, “I’m going to land on that water and break my neck, because it’s going to be hard and I’m supposed to have walked on it.” So I was kind of relieved when I cut right through and found myself under the waves.