Living and working in Belize, I have the great joy of being right near the second largest coral reef in the world. A surprising new activity that I have been able to start enjoying, along with my husband and our oldest son, is scuba diving. We’ve only been able to go a few times so far, but those hours underwater have been some of the absolute most wonderful hours of my life. Every time I’m gliding just above the ocean floor, 60 or 90 feet below the surface, I am at peak joy. And even while I’m swimming, I wonder how I can bring this level of peace, joy, and wonder into my everyday life and ministry.
Before this past summer, I was totally unfamiliar with scuba diving. I knew that it involved diving into the ocean, where, by the way, all the sharks and jellyfish live, trusting only a small tank of air to avoid drowning and death, but that was about it. My husband has wanted to get certified since we moved to Mexico in 2015 and I was always a little hesitant. I mean, I love the ocean, but also I really like being alive.
Finally this past summer, I agreed to learn—and it was amazing. And the whole time I kept noticing things about our training or the experience itself and I kept saying to my husband Brian—that’s a life lesson right there. I love the Kingdom of God and I look for it everywhere and I see it so much in scuba diving.
Scuba diving is extremely dangerous, really. There is the ever-present risk of death or damage. If divers are not responsible, we can profoundly hurt the marine environment we’re visiting. Animals and plants both provide risks as well as joys. So scuba training is basically going down a list of the different things that can kill you while diving and how to avoid or handle those things so you can experience the joy and wonders under the sea, and (our trainers hope) so we can connect with the ocean and become motivated to actively engage with it and protect it.
That is how I feel about ministry. Ministry can be dangerous. We work to bring faith, hope, and love to a world that is, at times, drowning in sorrow and pain. Our faith struggles as we witness, at close range, trauma after trauma after trauma. Sometimes nothing we do feels effective and we get burned out, drained, overwhelmed with compassion fatigue. Ministers are frequently among the youngest to experience health issues and are at high risk of experiencing a stress-related death. Like scuba training, a huge component of seminary is learning how to navigate these dangers so that we can experience joy and wonder as we work with the Spirit and follow divine leadings. (Please note: By minister, I mean any person who consciously tries to care for others spiritually, however that looks and whether a person has been formally trained or not. Seminary can equip ministers, but it cannot turn anyone into a minister, and it is not a pre-requisite to ministering.)
So these are my ideas about how to translate the practices of scuba diving into a life of ministry, with a caveat: I have yet to put these ideas into practice successfully! I offer these thoughts simply in the hope that if I, if we, can minister and live like a scuba diver, we might also find the restful peace, the sustaining faith, and the deep wonder that form the joy that motivates so many divers to engage in such a dangerous activity.
Always keep breathing.
The first and most important rule is to keep breathing and never, ever hold your breath. If you hold your breath and ascend too far, your lungs can explode because of the way pressure interacts with them. So no matter what else is going on, you have to keep breathing. This is how I feel about prayer. To me, prayer is spiritual breathing. I breathe out, I speak to God. I breathe in, I listen. No matter what else is going on, I do best when I am in constant communication with God. As we enter ministry situations, we can be praying constantly and listening for the Spirit’s leading at every moment.
Stay calm.
There are many opportunities in a dive to get anxious, and we are taught to manage the anxiety with our breath—slow and steady breathing can help calm anxious feelings so we can think clearly and handle whatever is causing the anxiety. How many times does the Bible encourage us not to be anxious? I struggle a great deal with anxiety and the breaths of my body and the breaths of my prayers are not always enough to calm it; but I believe that in the Kingdom of God, they will be. When I am feeling anxious in ministry, I have a special responsibility to work to calm myself and to reach out to people to take over if I cannot, to avoid damaging anyone I am caring for. Because God does not want us to minister anxiously, I’m convinced of it—God wants us to be calm and trust that everything will be OK—or we will heal from what isn’t.
Care for your equipment.
An important survival strategy while diving is to understand your equipment and take excellent care of it. This is how I feel about our bodies. It is with our bodies that we move through this world and do the things that God has set for us to do; it is often through our bodies that God moves and acts in this world. And we can be more effective in our ministry if we understand what our bodies need and take care of them, in really practical ways like getting enough water, sleep, and good food, as well as handling stress effectively and so on.
Understand your responsibility.
In Scuba diving, each person is responsible for him- or herself. Is my air good? Is my equipment set up properly? Am I diving within my own limits or trying to match someone else’s? Am I diving in a safe place? Am I healthy enough that I can dive without causing myself problems? That is all my responsibility to know and decide and verify and no one else’s.
Taking this concept a step further, I felt a little shocked a couple of times in scuba training, because we must take care of ourselves first, even if someone else is being injured. If someone in our group is having a problem and they have to ascend so quickly it will hurt them, we are supposed to just let them go, even when we know they will get hurt. We are not supposed to go with them. We follow at a slow, safe pace so that we will avoid hurting ourselves, and we will be more able to help them when we get to the surface—because two hurt people are worse than one hurt person.
I felt shocked by this because I was diving with people I love very much. I just always feel like I would rather go through something painful with them so that they are not alone. I am willing to be hurt with my loved ones in order to accompany them. Sometimes in ministry, too, it can be very easy to join in the pain of those we are caring for. But I really see the wisdom here—my loved ones who are in a situation bad enough that they must make an uncontrolled ascent—they are going to get hurt no matter what. And I am not useful to them if I also hurt myself. This speaks to me of boundaries and love and above all trust—trust that the God who accompanies each of us is sufficient for others in their moment of pain. It is an acceptance of the fact that I cannot decrease anyone’s pain by allowing myself to get hurt.
Buddy up.
Balancing this fierce protection of self is the fact that divers hardly ever dive alone. Most divers have at least one buddy and most go in groups. And buddies are supposed to stay very close to each other because we rely on each other for survival. My diving gear has built into it equipment made entirely so another person can share my air. Our training involves not just keeping ourselves safe but also how to rescue and stabilize other people. We practice sharing air underwater, administering first aid at the surface and on the boat, dragging each other on the surface if someone gets too tired. In this way, divers (at least ideally) are a community of people where everyone is practicing excellent, self-protective boundaries that enable us to be instantly available to help the people around us—and to ask for help when we need it. This reminds me very strongly of the interdependence in the Beloved Community—a group of ministers who know that we must care for ourselves so that we may care for each other.
Rest.
An aspect of diving that resonated deeply with me, especially as someone who experiences chronic pain, is that we are supposed to swim slowly and steadily and not get tired. If we must strain ourselves and we start to feel over-exerted, we must signal to our buddy and stop moving altogether and just float and rest until we feel better. Wow, do I need this in my life! I firmly believe that God does not intend for us to go through life feeling exhausted all of the time, even though it feels sometimes as though exhaustion is a badge of honor for a minister—proof, somehow, that we are working as hard as we can. Rather, God wants us to rest in Divine love and in our beds—this is why Jesus went into the hills so often to pray—this is why we have Sabbath. It is profoundly holy to rest; then we can do the work of our lives with a calm and centered energy.
Listen to your body.
Sometimes people will go to great effort to prepare for a day of diving. Sometimes they travel to different countries, even. They are equipped and ready and then they realize—today is not the day for diving. And it can happen at any time—we may wake up the morning of the dive feeling sick. While we’re underwater, we may feel some kind of pain that requires an early end to the dive. Between dives, we might develop a headache that prevents us from engaging in the next dive. Divers must listen to the signals our bodies are giving us to prevent a catastrophic event underwater. It is the same in ministry, from the way we might realize we need a rest, to the way our intuition might let us know that a particular situation is dangerous and we need to bring a friend, to the way we need to pay attention to small symptoms before they develop into full-blown conditions or diseases. So often, ministers feel that we must push ourselves—we don’t want to disappoint co-workers or we feel that people need us. But we need our bodies to minister—we must learn to set aside external expectations and respect the signals that our bodies are sending us. It is better to miss a meeting once in a while, for example, than have to end our ministries early in life because we are too sick (or dead) to continue.
Equalize.
As a person descends into deeper water, the water pressure increases, and we can really feel this in our ears. If we ignore our ears as we descend, the difference in pressure outside our ears and inside could actually cause permanent damage to our eardrums. So we solve this problem by frequently pausing for a moment to equalize the pressure in our ears. We do it in the first descent and then again and again throughout the dive as we swim up and down, following the contours of the seafloor. In the same way, ministers can pay attention to the pressure we feel. It may be a particular event or a stressful week or an emergency call. But just as we keep breathing, we must keep equalizing our internal sense of pressure with the outside pressures. Do we need to focus on our breathing for a moment? Practice mindfulness? Pray? Repeat a favorite verse or affirmation? What do we need, moment by moment, to process the stress we feel so that we continue our ministry in a centered and present manner?
Keep your eyes wide open.
When I am diving, I notice that my eyes are opened very wide. I am in awe of everything I see—the colors, the life, the way my body feels in the water. I love the way the plants and some corals wave with the water currents. Sometimes I still myself and simply let the water move me with them. I like to watch a particular fish while it defends its home and I love to swim with a particular school of fish. Although diving is quite dangerous, it is completely worth risking the danger—because under the surface of the ocean is a whole world of incredible beauty and life. We have seen sea turtles, sharks, stingrays, coral, and hundreds of brightly colored fish. And the animals seem to accept our presence. Fish swam with us. A turtle did not interrupt her grazing while I swam up close enough to touch her (don’t worry, I didn’t). Sharks and rays lay in the sand while we knelt next to them. Fish hovered outside their little homes and watched us as we swam by. Diving is an utterly unique experience in my life and one which stirs deep joy and awe in my heart—a familiar feeling whenever I catch glimpses of the Kingdom of God breaking ever so steadily into this world.
What in our ministries is beautiful? What is amazing? What inspires awe in us? When can we simply relax and enjoy the movement of the Spirit in our ministry? What is it about our ministries that keeps us coming back to minister more? Where do you see glimpses of God?
Our lives are long, and so I think we take for granted that we can abuse ourselves—we’re not going to die of it—not today anyways. And I think that’s why diving brings such clarity—it’s short, and if you do not take excellent care of yourself and your buddies—someone very well may die today. You can see the effects of abuse, carelessness, selfishness, or irresponsibility immediately. So diving highlights dramatically the ways in which I believe we are to live and minister in alignment with the Kingdom of God—pray without ceasing, breathe in peace, take care of yourself, take care of others, let others take care of you, equalize your pressure, listen to your body, move slowly and rest to recover from short spurts of overactivity, and consider deeply the beauty all around. I hope that if I can learn to do these things every day with the intensity that I do them when I am scuba diving, I will be able to move through my life and ministry with that same joy that I dive with.
Nikki Holland lives with her family in Belize City, where she is the Director of Friends United Meeting’s (FUM) ministries in Belize. She is a member of Belize Friends Church and West Richmond Friends Meeting. She graduated from ESR with a Master of Divinity in May 2020. She enjoys reading, singing, writing, and snuggling with her kiddos.