“As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good ol’ way and who shall wear the starry crown. Good Lord show me the way.” Negro Spiritual/Slave song
Leonardo da Vinci said that water is the driving force of all nature. Not only is water the driving force of all nature, but it is also the most powerful symbol in the human imagination. The two of course are intimately related. Artists have depicted the dramatic ambiguity of water since time immemorial, its profound beauty, its danger… the juxtaposition a paradigm of the cosmos. Water is the medium in which all life began, in which all life begins. Astral scientists in searching other worlds for life, look first for water. The swell of ocean currents carry the genera of God’s imagination to all climes of the planet The oceans water the earth; cool it from solar heat. Rivers bear nutrients and commerce. We and the planet die in short order without water. And then, paradoxically, water is deadly. We drown in it. There is catastrophic storm surge….millions of lives over the millennia claimed by the sea in her dark fury. Water is life-giving; water is deadly.
Water has forever been at the heart of the human religious consciousness. Before recorded history, we have evidence of religious water rites… rites of purification and rites of transformation and new birth. In ancient eastern religions, in Phoenician and Egyptian culture water rites marked passage from death to life… a reiteration of the truth of the universe that to live, first one must die; that life on earth is a cycle of death and life, death and life… suffering and joy… suffering and joy… there is not one without the other….So says the Spirit… The sooner we own that reality the sooner we will fully be alive.
This Sunday we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, the animating force of nature that creates and recreates, that leads us into all truth, that engenders love for the created order. Water is the operative symbol. It is no accident that Pentecost is a principal baptismal day in the church, a day in which the people of God make public witness of their commitment to a way of life, a commitment to serving the truth, the commitment of giving one’s very life to the greater good. This is no small thing, giving one’s life to the Spirit of God. It takes consciousness, honest rigor and above all… courage. It is, as the song says, “the good old way” to live… the only way to live as God intends us to live.
To live in such a way is to go down into the deathly waters and die to illusion and self-centeredness. But know always that these waters also bear all life and life abundant. In drowning to falsehood and evil, we rise to meaning, truth and joy. We leave our fear in the amniotic deep, and are reborn into life-giving hope…. Wearing the starry crown of love for our world… O people let’s go down… let’s go down… let’s go down… down to the Spirit river of life.
