I can trace my beginnings to a river. For once upon a time in England, in the difficult days of the depression just before World War Two, two men and a woman boarded a ferry across the Mersey – yes, just like the song! One of the men recognised the woman and introduced him to his friend, the other man. Every day as the three of them made their commute by ferry they would meet, and the woman and the second man grew closer. The second man went to war, but in 1942 he came home on leave and they were married. Then, or perhaps it was a different time of leave, the two of them went to the cinema, but the bombs fell as so often at that time. They sheltered under the great Liverpool St George’s Hall in the air raid shelter. But fearful of missing the last ferry across that river, they took a chance and raced to the shelter near the ferry terminal. That was the night the St George’s air raid shelter took a direct hit and all who had sheltered there were killed. Their need to catch the ferry saved the woman and the second man. In 1944 the woman gave birth to a baby – that child is my older sister. The river, and the ferry that crossed it brought my parents together, and without it, I would not be...
Rivers are potent symbols in human life, precisely because they are essential to life and a symbol of it. Go back far enough along the streams of human DNA and every one of us will find ourselves connected to every other human being and to the rivers that support life. Rivers are infinitely precious because they contain the mere1% of water on our planet that is accessible fresh water – 97% of water on our planet is salt water, 3% is frozen (though rapidly melting) and we rely upon the other 1% for everything. For without fresh, clean water we die. Rivers have been since time began the places of nourishment for land and people; the arteries of trade; the places that both divide and join territory. Hence it is more than dismaying to discover that for example no river in the UK tested this week was ecologically healthy. Not one. Here in Brisbane, the Brisbane river was reported just over a year ago to be at an ecological tipping point, as measures taken thirty years ago to protect its waters from nitrogen and phosphorous levels are failing to keep pace with the growth of the city. While there are some good signs, constant watchfulness is required. We are beginning to understand that whatever we put into our waterways we ultimately drink – be that bacteria from sewage; insecticides and pesticides, or more insidiously microplastics. I only discovered this week, that if you wash just one t -shirt, once, that is made from polyester, around 300mg of microplastics are released into the water system. Time to find a natural fibre perhaps…
So, what can be said and done from a Christian perspective? For rivers lie at the heart of our faith, from the rivers of the garden of Eden, through Moses in his basket on the Nile, and Ezekiel with his vision of the river of life, to Jesus and so many others since, baptised in the Jordan and of course the vision of the river of life in Revelation. Rivers in our Christian life are places of beauty, safety, restoration and transformation as they are for all human beings in our incarnational faith. Rivers inform the metaphors of our spiritual being, as we seek God as both source and destination. Rivers take us to God as both Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. They image for us the liminal places, the crossing points and as in many cultures ultimately the crossing point between life here and life hereafter.
Perhaps the beginning of repentance, (in its truest sense as change of mind and heart towards what is life-giving and not death dealing) – can be found by meditating on our connection to rivers and seeking the good of our rivers. For what we do to the river we do to ourselves, and when we find God in the river, we find God at our depths. This makes our daily choices, to contribute to the pollution or begin to find a solution, key to our spiritual life. For the river unites us to our true selves, to each other and to God. In some sense our life is a river and finds its ending in the ocean that is God.
This week Petrina sent me this beautiful poem by Kahil Gibran which might be a place for us to begin or continue our meditation on the river that is our life:
It is said that before entering the sea
A river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled
From the peaks of the mountains
The long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
She sees an ocean so vast,
That to enter
There seems nothing more than to disappear for ever.
But there is no other way.
The river cannot go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
Of entering the ocean
Because only then will fear disappear,
Because that’s when the river will know
It’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
But of becoming the ocean.
Amen.
by Penny Jones, for River Sunday, 27 September 2020
So, what can be said and done from a Christian perspective? For rivers lie at the heart of our faith, from the rivers of the garden of Eden, through Moses in his basket on the Nile, and Ezekiel with his vision of the river of life, to Jesus and so many others since, baptised in the Jordan and of course the vision of the river of life in Revelation. Rivers in our Christian life are places of beauty, safety, restoration and transformation as they are for all human beings in our incarnational faith. Rivers inform the metaphors of our spiritual being, as we seek God as both source and destination. Rivers take us to God as both Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. They image for us the liminal places, the crossing points and as in many cultures ultimately the crossing point between life here and life hereafter.
Perhaps the beginning of repentance, (in its truest sense as change of mind and heart towards what is life-giving and not death dealing) – can be found by meditating on our connection to rivers and seeking the good of our rivers. For what we do to the river we do to ourselves, and when we find God in the river, we find God at our depths. This makes our daily choices, to contribute to the pollution or begin to find a solution, key to our spiritual life. For the river unites us to our true selves, to each other and to God. In some sense our life is a river and finds its ending in the ocean that is God.
This week Petrina sent me this beautiful poem by Kahil Gibran which might be a place for us to begin or continue our meditation on the river that is our life:
It is said that before entering the sea
A river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled
From the peaks of the mountains
The long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
She sees an ocean so vast,
That to enter
There seems nothing more than to disappear for ever.
But there is no other way.
The river cannot go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
Of entering the ocean
Because only then will fear disappear,
Because that’s when the river will know
It’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
But of becoming the ocean.
Amen.
by Penny Jones, for River Sunday, 27 September 2020
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