Immerse
Fiona Basile
Book available through website
Immerse is the perfect title for a book focused on people in whose activities most of us are unlikely to join. It brings together beautiful photographs and reflections by people who swim in Port Phillip Bay at 5am each day, winter and summer. Not an activity likely to attract me or most Madonna readers, I imagine. Yet it may fascinate our readers by the depth of its spiritual insights. They are gathered together under the headings of Community, Care, Spirit and Gratitude. As those in a close-knit Christian group might do, the members share what drew them to the group, the life they found in one another’s company, how swimming touched their hearts and, in some instances, changed their lives, and how grateful they are for what they have experienced.
Christian readers will recognise in the book not simply an experience like their own but one that comes from the same source and finds expression in the same graciousness.
Many wonderful lines, too, lend themselves to prayer:
I praise the sun that kisses the water
And the gull that squarks overhead
I rejoice in the gift of knowing that I am alive and loved
And I dance.
And as a description of what baptism could mean, it is difficult to go past these lines:
Water has a way
of stripping back the
layers, making you
vulnerable and allowing
your best self to shine.