Geologists have evidence that 32,000 years ago, on the western edge of the Hawaiian Island of Oahu, a relatively small volcano whose west-facing wall lay alongside the Atlantic Ocean, experienced a major underwater fissure along an undersea flank. Perhaps caused by a minor magmatic tremor, it allowed countless thousands of gallons of cool seawater to suddenly pour into a complex labyrinthine network of volcanic lava tubes already heated to hundreds of degrees by the underground chambers of liquid rock. The sudden flash of steam in the enclosed geologic formation exploded with such violence that the entire western wall of the volcano disappeared into the sky and ocean as the energy of the steam explosion rendered the volcano into a brand new, very picturesque tropical inlet. It was later named Hanauma Bay.
One clear dusky evening in 1975, I was in my scuba gear at the eastern end of the bay with my dive partner, ready to ride the bay’s front facing perpetual rip current into the center of the extinct volcano for a night dive. As the sun disappeared over the western wall, we submerged at the mouth of the rip current to effortlessly ride it into the bay.
Rip currents have a well-earned, terrifying reputation, but in some circumstances, they are like boarding underwater subways to hitch a free, zero-energy ride. This particular rip I had ridden half a dozen times before, but always in daylight.
The current pulled us through the narrow opening in the reef made to accommodate the undersea Hawaiian telephone cables connecting Oahu with Maui and other islands. Indeed, those very cables were going to be our way back out of the volcano at the end of the dive. Instead of trying the impossible and swimming against the rip, we planned to pull our way back against the current by hand-walking the cables through the reef wall. It was the fulfillment of the diver’s first rule – always carefully plan as many exits as you do entries into the ocean. Coming up short on a plan to safely exit the ocean is never a good strategy.
The perpetual rip current always carries fine sand with it, so that visibility in the current itself is limited, especially after sunset. That is why we missed the inconvenient fact that a recent storm had covered the cable with sand and silt halfway through the opening.
Unfortunately, since we could not see this on the way out, we only discovered the fact after our dive was complete and we were headed back to the cable to pull our way back to the beach and end the dive. The entire plan was predicated on a successful exit by using the cables, including the amount of air left in our tanks at the end.
I was very familiar with this dive and was leading the way back to the beach as the visibility dropped in the now complete darkness of the undersea bay. I had a dive light strapped to my wrist because both hands were busy with pulling on the telephone cable in the stiff current. Then suddenly, the cable completely disappeared under the sand just before the opening into the beach facing reef, just at the strongest part of the current.
In the murk and darkness, I tried to dig for the cable ahead, but the digging only made the visibility worse, and it became apparent that the cable was buried too deep. I could feel my partner tapping on my fins, obviously wondering about the holdup. We were already very low on air, and this underwater return was the only way out of the bay.
Having no other option, I released my hold on the cable and immediately collided with my partner as the current quickly pulled me back past him into the center of Hanauma Bay. I immediately surfaced and filled my buoyancy compensator (BC) with air so that I could relax, catch my breath, and get a handle on my mental bearings. Panic while diving typically spirals into a death sentence.
A minute or so later, my partner surfaced and joined me in the brilliant, moonless starlight of the tropical bay.
The bay water was choppy with the trade winds blowing directly into the open caldera of the bay, causing an annoying regularity of white capped waves sloshing against us as we floated mostly submerged, with just our heads and necks out of the water. To keep from swallowing the bitter seawater, we popped our snorkels into our mouths, which mostly worked… mostly.
My buddy and I began to discuss options, extracting the snorkels to talk in short sentences. One was to try and submerge at the cable again and see if we could work it out of the sand just enough to make it back to shore. Swimming over the reef with this chop would cause severe injuries, as we would be pushed and ground to bleeding flesh over the shallow coral wall by the surf. And swimming back against the rip was not even possible at all. The slice in the reef wall was the only way out safely.
Another option was to swim to the steep western wall of the volcano and try and catch a gentle swell back onto the rocks of the side. But we could see the violence of the waves crashing against the walls, and from where we were, that exit looked impossible.
The final option was finally beached between us – the “do nothing” option. We could easily float and try and nap using our BCs until the next morning. The water was warm enough, and we were wearing full wetsuits. After we each mulled it over in our minds, we finally agreed that the do-nothing option was the least risky. And, accepting our lot, floating shark bait was less risky than being smashed on the sheer, sharp, and very deep volcanic walls or reef structure. Hopefully, some diver would simply throw us a rope and pull us back through the rip after sunrise.
“Lose the belts,” I said with a sigh, and my partner reluctantly nodded. We were practically out of air anyway. Each belt with lead weights was not cheap, but dropping them would definitely give us an edge and another half a foot of buoyancy. We toggled the quick disconnects on the belts, and they fell away into the darkness. In a day or so, they would be retrieved by some other lucky divers in the daylight.
So, we settled down for a long night bobbing in the chop of the spectacular tropical bay, at least making a desultory attempt to enjoy the starlight and the sound of the waves crashing on the volcano walls.
It was the do-nothing option at its best. It was all going to have to sort itself out at some indistinct future time without our efforts, which, no matter what we did, would just make it far worse than just doing nothing at all.
But people are just not wired that way, and the thought of offering ourselves up as shark bait as a part of the plan, however improbable, had me ever-so-gently pushing my way closer to the western wall. Eventually, my partner saw me slowly move away and responded, “My thoughts exactly.” We both had the same idea: to at least swim by the wall and check it out.
At first glance, as we hovered just out of the range of being sucked into the violence, the scene seemed just as it appeared from the center of the bay. It was loud and chaotic – white foam crashing against black volcanic rock barely illuminated by starlight and the dancing, bobbing shafts of our small lights. Yet we were looking for the predictable pattern in the chaos. In the beam of our dive lights, we were trying to understand the lay of the rocks just under the surface. There was a small, narrow pathway hewn along that wall that led to the beach. But the drop at the edge of the walkway was sheer, more than 60 feet deep.
We watched the surge and tried to make some sense of the white foam and spindrift, cyclically uncovering and reflooding the wall and mostly flooded pathway. And then we stated at almost the same moment, “I see it!”
In the surf’s rhythm, we could see that the surge lifted toward the wall, paused, and then fell away. It was noisy and beautifully powerful, but it was certainly not actually violently impacting the wall; it was just pushing up against it as a barrier to the rhythmic swell.
“I’m saving my tank and gear and going in,” I said with resolution. That gear had been a dream of mine since childhood and was not an insignificant investment. But was it worth my life? As I looked at the surge and foam, I argued with myself that if I had to ditch it later, I could, but I would try and save myself and my gear by what I sincerely prayed would be a very fortuitous mental calculation.
“Be careful,” my partner said with wasted breath, as I also noticed he was not dropping his gear either.
I paddled closer to the wall, just outside the surge effect, then, at the right moment, I pushed hard and fast into the broad swell just as it rose. I was paddling toward the black wall with a purpose. And, just as I had planned, the wave lifted me onto the narrow path and deposited me with relative gentleness. Later, I would come to recognize and very much appreciate that this was one of those “hand of God moments.”
I immediately stood up so that the next wave would not carry me off the path, just as my partner repeated the same self-rescue. In a mere 15 minutes, we were back on the beach, very much looking forward to the upcoming cold beer and sleeping in our own warm beds.
Over the decades, I have thought about that story many times. Today, when I consider the “do nothing” option, it requires that I must lean hard on patience, watching and waiting in a real spiritual sense for the momentary crisis to pass, and allow the Holy Spirit to give me just the right opening to do what must be done. The “do noting option” has become a powerful resource in my professional, personal, and spiritual life.
As a Templar Prior, I have been given the inestimable privilege of leading a wonderful cadre of volunteers who are simultaneously struggling with their own life crises, problems, and realities, as well as their sacred Templar duties. Patience with them and waiting on God to reveal His hand in just the right moments is literally the only way to lead these precious warriors of God’s Kingdom.
In the end, it is never my work or my doing. I find myself more and more drifting under the starlight, always acutely aware of the sharks just beneath my feet. And yet I only use the “do nothing” option as a mechanism of leveraging patience and obliging the spiritual wait. I am always moving quietly in the great lagoon of life, barely paddling my feet, and watching and waiting as I observe the ebb and flow and the cycles of life until the Holy Spirit gives me the position and opportunity to go in, to act right now guided by His power and immediacy, exercising His perfect effort of grace at precisely the right half-second.
Said King David of this process in his own life from Psalm 27:13-14, “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.”
And from Isaiah 40:31, “Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.”
I have often repeated this favorite line from my baby boomer peers: “Sometimes I look back on my life and I am seriously amazed that I am still alive.” But I am. Yet – only by the grace of the One Who Created me and has faithfully kept me safe in all these great adventures.