Surfing And Humility
Surfing saved my life.
That’s an over-dramatic way of putting it. Perhaps the more accurate thing to say is that surfing has played an integral role in the working out of my salvation, a grace from God that helps me better understand His grace overall. But saying “surfing saved my life” grabs one’s attention a little bit better.
I’d grown up a skateboarder, starting in the summer of 1996, which put me adjacent to surfing. Over the next four years or so, I’d be in surfing’s orbit in some form or another—either by being in stores that sold clothing and accessories related to both or because my youth pastor, who taught me a lot about skateboarding, was also a surfer and was trying to get me and my best friend to join him some Saturday.
My mom was not a beach person. So I seldom saw the ocean growing up. We lived in Orlando, which meant a trip to the beach would have been an event (at least an hour’s worth of driving each way). But I was very much into things like snorkeling and SCUBA. My first ever job was at a pet store that specialized in fish and I became borderline obsessed with the little critters to the point that I briefly considered ichthyology as a career. Which is all to say that I had a sort of hunger for the sea.
***
I’ve written about it before, but I was a kind of misfit kid. I didn’t really fit in with a lot of people, except my best friend and his little brother (who were practically family to me). I was too “Christian” for a lot of the cool kids at my school (even though it was a Baptist school), but also too alternative and grungy for the youth group set at the time. I fought with school administrators almost every day and openly rebelled against much of the fundamentalist elements in our church. I got really good at “code-switching” when around certain groups, only really feeling like myself when I was with friends or alone at home.
During my junior year of high school (second-to-last year before graduation, for those readers who might have a different school system) I got kinda tired of fighting with everyone. I watched Office Space for the first time and it opened my mind to a completely different way of thinking: not giving a shit. I decided to just do what I wanted to do. And I decided, after winter break, that I wanted to play baseball.
I worked hard. I carried a baseball with me everywhere like I was Pistol Pete and his basketball. I was throwing and catching after school, going to batting cages. I was hitting solid line drives off the 90 MPH pitching machine. But, I did not make the cut. I have my suspicions about this (my mom worked for the church of which my school was parochial and there had been long-simmering tensions between the two institutions; none of the church staff kids were picked that year). Regardless, this turned out to be a God-send because one day I was skating at the church and my best friend shows up and tells me that he and Eddy (our youth pastor) had gone surfing together and that it was awesome. He told me “my dad is going to take us to the beach tomorrow, you should come.”
That day would have been the date of my first baseball game had I made the team.
We drove to New Smyrna Beach, rented long boards, and waded out into the freezing cold water. I was in a wetsuit (I was taking SCUBA lessons as part of a Marine Biology class, so had acquired one as part of this, thankfully). I don’t remember much about the conditions. All I remember was taking the board to the white water and trying to catch whatever was breaking. New Smyrna, at high tide, has a long flat section of shallow water (which makes it ideal for kids playing at the beach and why it’s a popular family spot) and so I was pushing off the sand and into white water.
I’ll never forget standing up for the first time. The wave was maybe shin-high, and I was basically going straight toward the beach. But the speed and the simple fact that I was being moved by a small amount of water shifted something deep in my mind. I wound up getting hit by my board later that day, which also left an impression (both literally and figuratively):
there was something much bigger than me out there.
***
I was an angry kid. Apparently this is not uncommon for young men who grow up without fathers. My dad left my mom as soon as he found out she was pregnant with me and I never met the man (he died in July of last year). I don’t consider myself someone with “daddy issues” or whatever. But I do agree with something Donald Miller writes about in his book for guys who grow up without dads, entitled To Own A Dragon, where he notes that fathers (or father-figures) are key in helping young men learn to channel their aggressions and frustrations. We have a lot of testosterone, which is necessary for our development, and it begins to mess with us in our teenage to young adult years. Someone who’s been through it can help us navigate the path. I did not have that person.
I had a bunch of anger pent up and I took it out on authority figures, or on people that I felt were hypocritical. It often felt like the world was out to get me somehow. Plus, I was smart in a way that didn’t quite fit with my Baptist school environment (I excelled in creative pursuits; I was also quite good in history and Bible, which did afford me some accolades, but I hated doing homework and so my grades did not reflect, to the school’s eyes, my abilities). I was a self-centered little snot who thought he was smarter and better than everyone else around him. I did not realize it at the time, but I needed to get my ass kicked around a bit, on a kind of spiritual level.
***
One of my favorite surfing stories, one that has woven itself into the fabric of our shared mythology, is the story of Greg Noll’s last wave. The short version of the story is this: during an immense swell that hit the Hawaiian islands during the winter of 1969, Noll paddled out at Makaha (in defiance of law enforcement) and caught what people have said was the largest wave surfed at the time. Noll, known for his bombastic nature, allowed the size of the wave to get bigger in the retelling: first 50 feet, then 70, and so on. Regardless of the size, what’s true is that Greg Noll caught this wave, came in, loaded his board onto the roof of his car, and never surfed again. He continued to shape surfboards and be part of the industry. But he never paddled out again.
There are numerous interviews about this. The reason Noll gives for quitting surfing was that he had reached a point in life where, in his own words, he was begging God to send him a wave that he could not ride. He challenged God and God answered. He said that that wave humbled him and made him realize that he could not continue down this path anymore. Surfing was going to kill him because he did not know how or when to stop. Until that wave made that decision for him.
I love this story because it feels true to my situation. For Greg Noll, it took an eternally-growing wave to put him in his place. For me, it took an ankle-high roller.
I learned from that tiny wave that I was not the center of the universe. I would come to learn that I am a recipient of God’s grace, surfing the waves He sends.
***
That day of surfing set me on my path. I caught a wave that I’m still riding. If not for surfing, I would not be who and where I am today. Surfing would teach me about humility and God’s grace. It would also become a deciding factor in where I went to college, which would put me right in front of the Episcopal parish that would reignite my Christian faith after a few years of faltering. This would, of course, lead to my call to the ordained priesthood. It would also predispose me toward Hawai’i, the birthplace of surfing.
It was in March of 2000 that I first surfed. And it was in March of 2020 that I would begin my life in Hawai’i. There is a fairly straight line between those two points.
Had I remained an angry young man, I might’ve gone down a similar path as my dad. But God had other plans in mind.
So, yeah, surfing saved my life.
***
The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.
NOTE: The header photo is the only known close-up photo I have of myself surfing. It was taken by my friend Kurt probably in the summer of 2004 when I lived in Fort Pierce Florida. I’m surfing a kinda busted Yater Spoon that I bought on the cheap from Spunky’s Surfshop, a board that would also play an important role in my spiritual life, which I’ll write about some other time.