mary setterholm

Mary Setterholm is one of those unforgettable figures you meet too rarely in life. their stories resonate with a power that only comes with truth and with a significance that only comes with reality, in the way that only happens with messages that speak of human transformation and the depths of our transfiguration.

such things can only be described for what they are, bereft of the baggage of hyperbole, exaggeration, or hype. they are better told direct and concise, so as to reveal in clarity the pathos of the human soul.

when i first came to California there were still stories of Mary Setterholm. they were told as legends, part apocryphal, part rumor, part myth. as part of the lore of surfing before my time. the stories were of a world-class champion and standard-bearer of women's surfing whose trajectory had been meteoric, with a breathtaking rise matched only by an equally breathtaking fall. no one i knew could say whatever happened to her; all they could do was offer murmurs of a message most cautionary, almost tragic.

last year, however, she made news again. but this time, it was not cautionary. it was instead in a far different, far more positive way. you can check out the media reports from the LA Times and PBS' Religion & Ethics Weekly:

• LA Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/19/local/me-lopez19
• PBS Religion & Ethics Weekly: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/october-23-2009/mary-setterholm/4475/
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvO4FKYfbj0
  

apparently, she'd gone through quite a few years of trial and tribulations, with her life taking some difficult turns. according to the news, her adult years were cycles of self-destruction, including a problematic marriage and episodes in prostitution, all of it driven by demons from her childhood.

ultimately, however, she finally managed to find some resolution, enough to construct a life that found her at amends with herself, her faith, and her life. she created a surf program for inner-city children, completed a theology degree at Loyola Marymount, and is now pursuing a graduate program in theology affiliated with Columbia University.

what i find so moving about Mary's story is that she was someone afflicted by so much misery, much of it not of her own making and much of it very much of her own making, but still managed to find her way. she broke the cycle of her own suffering, and in so doing transcended the confines of her own self-destruction and engaged the path of her own self-construction, as painful, confused, unpleasant, awful, mistake-filled, halting, faltering, staggering, falling, flat-out hard as it was...and in the process, became a better human being. by any measure of those words.

which is something i think we all--whether consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly, openly or confidentially--are striving to do. with each thought, with each breath, with each step, with each mile, with each day, with each race, we are all trying to find our way and break past the suffering and transcend the confines of our lives, to come to some understanding of who we are and to some sense of this existence and to some revelation of our place within it, and thereby discover the truths that bind the universe together in the serenity that is silence of things significant and the realization of things profound...so that we may come to know the meaning of grace.

as deep as the waters of the human soul which was made in the image of the divine.

it's not a surf story. it's not an endurance sports story. it's a human story.

and that story isn't one about victory over others, but rather victory over our demons, over our tragedies, over ourselves.

it's about what it means to be triumphant.