Why do I Row?

I joined a rowing club last year. Trained and competed in a regatta. It has been tremendous. Lots of work and very fun.

But why did I do it? Sitting here now, after the thrill of racing and travel last week, the question is on my mind and feels somewhat unresolved.

I started jotting down ideas on paper:

(1) To challenge myself physically, (2) to combat stagnation, (3) to be a part of a team.

All true. Yet there is something more. There has to be to explain the effort this team puts forth.

So, below are themes which I think inform what I see on the surface. Centered around the love of God. The flourishing of the human person through an interaction with the material of life. The rowing itself being secondary, almost meaningless, in relation to the good which it is ordered towards.

Stillness within Action

It will happen every once in a while, either at rowing practice or on the drive home. When God’s presence is suddenly within reach. Maybe on a day out on the water, when the sun pierces through the trees on the horizon as the team waits between intervals. Where there is rest, I am suddenly alive, united with the self of the past and the ideals of the future. Able to sit with a perfect God amidst the inevitable imperfections of life. For me, those moments have come through rowing. Received as a gift and a sign to keep living in hope.

To Encounter Mercy

To push hard is to encounter weakness. As the meters fly by, feeling my body strain against output, at my limit. Here is where I realize my dependance on God. That just a bit more power and I will cease to be. And yet, I am, by no merrit of my own.

That in this exertion, I encounter the mercy of God which sustains me. Here is where the love of God becomes real: knowing that God descended into death to save me, even beyond what I experience now. That God’s love for me is greater than even this strain. As the meters stop and I recover to baseline, I feel a renewed gratitude for life, strengthened again.

To Ride into Battle Without Causing Harm

The thrill of racing: To compete, to win, to lose. To love God through sickness and health. This is the material of life: the spiritual battle. Which, when united to Christ, is transfigured and us alongwith.

Competing in rowing captures from a safe distance imposing realities of life not present to me like war, marriage, exaltation, or exile while preserving the dignity of those involved. It enables me to access these materials with justice. To then have them inform my spiritual life. To ride into battle without causing harm.

^ SLRC Men’s Open 8 at Nationals in Ann Arbor MI

At its core, just as art elevates the movements of grace through a physical medium, so does rowing through athletic and social expression. Rowing makes visible how we are more than what we might initially appear as. That this life is luminous with meaning which is altogether mysterious but flashes forth in moments of grace between intervals, fueling faith, hope, and love.