Water water everywhere

I awoke on Monday morning with a completely empty mind. I had no idea what to explore this week. I went through my usual morning prayer and meditative routine which continued as I enjoyed my shower. Now as you may or may not know I have a brand new bathroom, with a wonderful shower. As I stood there washing and just enjoying the heat of the water splashing all over me, as my senses woke fully to life, it came to me what I wanted to explore this week, water.

Water the most basic element of life, both of the external life and our own bodies. We are made of water. We live on planet earth and yet truth be told if we look at picture of our world from space should we really call it planet earth, surely it is planet water. The surface of our planet is two thirds water. Physically we are mainly made up of water.

We are like water. Yes our physical form is solid and unbending but our psyche is not. It can be bent and shaped in all directions, much like water. The bending and the shaping does not really occur at the physical level, more the metaphysical one. People change, although physically they may well look the same.

Although our world is mainly water so many people live without this basic resource. I’m very aware how fortunate I am to live in a time and place where clean, hot, running water is readily available. A hundred years ago this was not necessarily the case in this country and it is not the case for so many people who live in many parts of the world today.

I remember being made aware of this during my trip to Transylvania a couple of years ago. I noticed that there were wells in several of the yards of the homes I visited in Maros St George. Now as it happens these were no longer in use as the town now had a general water supply. That said this was not the case for the more remote village of Icland. The homes there were still supplied by well water.

For many folk in many parts of the world the situation is far more desperate. How many lives perish each year because of the lack clean or any water at all?

We cannot live without water, well not for more than one week they say. I know I can't if you've ever seen me lead worship you will see I guzzle large amounts of it throughout the hour. What that is about is a mystery to me to, maybe it’s that living breathing spirit coming out of me? God knows!

With water being so central to life it is hardly surprising then that it would play such a large role in the many religious traditions of humanity. It is central to many of rituals of most faiths. It symbolises birth and re-birth and is seen not only as a sustaining substance but as a cleansing and therefore purifying one.

God or the Divine is often portrayed by water. This is hardly surprising when you think of its many qualities. It can bend into any shape and cover and over power all life. It is life giving and sustaining and can be immensely powerful. It brings to mind some words by Forrest Church on God. Forrest said “God is not God’s name. God is our name for that power that is greater than all and yet present in each.” Isn’t that what water is a power that is greater than all and yet present in each.

The spiritual, the religious life, is about living in a certain way. The question I suppose is what is the right way? Well maybe water or the qualities it possesses can teach us the way. Perhaps the way is to live like water; to live with the qualities that water has.

Taoism teaches this, claiming that we must go with the flow of life, like water:

Nothing in the world is softer than water,

Yet nothing is better at overcoming the hard and strong.

This is because nothing can alter it.

That soft overcomes the hard

And gentle overcomes the aggressive

Is something that everybody knows

But none can do themselves.

Therefore the sages say:

The one who accepts the dirt of the state

Becomes its master.

The one who accepts its calamity

Becomes king of the world.

The Martial Artist Bruce Lee offered similar advice when he said:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You can put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You can put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

I believe that there is real wisdom in this. We can’t physically bend and shape much like water does, but I don’t think this is what is being meant here. I think this is talking about how we live. It’s our persona, our spirit, it is this that needs to bend and shape in order to be in harmony with all life and that eternal spirit that flows like water through all life.

There is something in this formlessness and the bending and shaping that speaks to me of truth, particularly religious truth. In the introduction to “One River Many Wells” Matthew Fox states:

“Meister Eckhart says: ‘Divinity is an Underground river that no one can stop and no one can dam up.” Fox himself says that “There is one underground river – but there are many wells into the river: an African well, a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a Goddess well, a Christian well, an Aboriginal well. Many wells but one river. To go down a well is to practise a tradition, but we would make a grave mistake (an idolatrous one) if we confused the well itself with the flowing waters of the underground river. Many wells, one river. That is Deep Ecumenism.”

Again this teaches something of the qualities of water that we can learn form. We can access water as we can access truth but we can never get the full picture, the whole truth and how ever we access the truth is always limited. That said if we come together we can drink from one another’s sources and share the one universal river of life.

We are one we are interconnected as we are with all life.

Water is the basic element of life. We are mainly made from it and we depend upon it. It unites everything that lives on this earth and links us not only to one another but to all that is. It is a power that we can work with and therefore live successfully or against and therefore struggle with.  If we remain rigid in all things we will struggle but if we can be moulded and bend ourselves to fit with life and that spirit that permeates all life we can be in harmony with everything.

Today I offer praise to water, that power that is greater than all and yet present in each.

Water the most basic ingredient of all life, may we absorb the lessons you offer us.

Bend us, shape us, form us in your image.

Amen

I will end this little chip of a blog with following words by Denise Levertov

“The Fountain” by Denise Levertov

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water

to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall

and you drinking there. And I too

before your eyes

found footholds and climbed

to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched — but not because

she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were

refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.

That fountain is there among its scalloped

green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there

with its quiet song and strange power

to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.

A Dreamers Odyssey: The Sea is Calling Me

During the last couple of weeks I have felt an overpowering urge to be beside the seaside, to be beside the sea...it keeps on calling me...Something from the depths of my being is crying out to go and stare at that wide open vastness. Or maybe it's a call from beyond...is God calling me?...All I know is that it is an irresistible urge...the sea keeps on calling me.

As I'm sure you've noticed the title of my blog is “I Dream of the Ocean”. Now truth to say is I don’t actually dream of the ocean. I am rarely even aware of dreaming. This, I am told, is due to the fact that I sleep so deeply that I am rarely conscious of my unconscious. I am only really aware of dreaming three or four times a year and this is usually when I’m suffering from anxiety or dealing with guilt.

A friend recently told me that water in dreams is tied in with our emotions and that it symbolises something moving from an unconscious level to the conscious level. The sea it would seem represents the transition between the two. It suggests the coming of a new perspective and a new hope no matter what the current difficulties may be.

This makes some sense to me. Maybe this yearning for the sea is keeping me looking forward in hope. It is drawing me out of myself, I do believe in “The Lure of Divine Love”. I have come to know it so well. 

I am not dreaming of the ocean though am I? I am experiencing this urge, this calling, in my conscious moments. It is occurring in my waking hours and not my sleeping ones. Well actually I’m sure it is occurring during my sleeping hours, it’s just that I’m only aware of it while I’m physically awake.

This calling has had a grip on me for about a year now. It struck on a trip to Blackpool. I had gone to the Aquatic centre. It’s an amazing place, but it did not hold my interest that day. All I wanted to do was go outside and look at the sea and feel the wind all around me. I wanted the space and I wanted the freedom. I will never forget looking up and seeing the seagull floating above as I stared out to sea. On reflection I suppose that all of this was deeply symbolic. A relationship was sadly coming to an end and I was in denial about it. The sea and the seagull were drawing me out of myself, I can see this now.

The call of the sea really took a hold at last year’s Unitarian Annual Meetings in Swansea. They were set by the sea and each day I would walk on the beach alone, stare out into the nothingness and feel the wind coursing all around me. The relationship had just about come to an end by then and I was no longer in denial about this. The walks on the beach and the staring out into the abyss were partially about me letting go, but they were also about reconnecting to hope, to God and understanding what I am here to do. That “Lure of Divine Love”, felt very strong there. Those few days in Swansea were a celebration of Bob Pounder, Daniel Costley and myself becoming Unitarian ministers.

As soon as I returned from Swansea I began my blogging adventure. I gave my blog the title “I Dream of The Ocean” after a line in the New Model Army song “Ocean Rising”. One of the major themes of my blogs is hope growing from despair and I think that this is what this call to the ocean is all about.

"Ocean Rising" by New Model Army

The call to the ocean and the call to the sea is a common theme. Our history and literature is rich with such stories. Several friends of mine have recounted personal tales when they were called to sea over the last few days.

It is the story of Odysseus that always springs to my mind when I think of the sea.  Homer’s Odyssey is rich in metaphor and speaks to a universal human condition. He sets out from Troy for the Isle of Ithaca where his wife and son await his homecoming. The journey is fraught with danger and distractions.

Trouble begins when Odysseus blinds one of the sons of Poseidon during battle. Poseidon in his rage blows his crew off course by sending storm after storm and brings all kinds of trouble to the adventurers. At one point they land on the Isle of Lotus Eaters. Here they eat poisonous leaves which produce a memory erasing, death inducing waking sleep; as a result they lose sight of home and become lost. Eventually they escape and fortune appears to turn in their favour as they arrive at the island home of Aeolus, the king of the winds. Here the weary travellers finds rest bite and Aeolus puts all the winds that have been blowing them off course in a bag and sets them back on track, they can now head for home. But just as they sight Ithaca, the men let the winds out of the bag and once again they are blown off course. They land on the isle of Aeaea, home of the Greek Goddess Circe. Here they become trapped and spell bound by the beautiful allures of the island. The men are cursed and turned to pigs. The curse is only lifted when Odysseus agrees to become Circe's consort. Once again disaster appears to have befallen them but somehow Odysseus is rescued from the comfort of her arms and persuaded to continue on his journey home, by his men.

On the way back to Ithaca the crew pass through the Underworld. Here Odysseus is guided by the blind prophet Teiresias, who reveals the dangers he has yet to face before he can once again gain Poseidon’s favour. He is offered full knowledge of the dangers of the Sirens songs and even a solution to them, which he passes on to his crew. The crew ignore the warnings and become trapped by the Sirens songs. Odysseus secures himself by chaining himself to the mast, but most of his crew, enchanted by the sirens songs, plunge into the reef and to their deaths.

Odysseus must now navigate the channel between the six headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis. He has by now lost most of his crew and in order to pass through must sacrifice six more men. He passes through and is finally washed up on the shores of Phaecia. Here he tells his story and wins Poseidons forgiveness. Finally he can return home.

Finally Odysseus reaches Ithaca, but fails to recognise it as home. In his despair he drags himself along the shoreline and comes across the goddess Athena, dressed as a young shepherd. Exhausted and seemingly close to death he begs her tell him where he is. She gazes at him through her star like eyes and replies “Sir, you must be a simpleton or have travelled very far from your home to ask me what country this is.”

How true this, how few of us recognise the treasure we are surrounded by. We go on wild adventures seeking oh so many things and we lose so much on the way, including friends who are dear to our hearts. The truth is, of course, that what we were searching for was there all along, we just couldn’t recognise it. We still can’t recognise it some days, even when we return to that place of love after we have escaped from disaster. We rarely recognise the treasures in our very hands. We already have the answer deep within us, imprinted in our DNA we just need to connect to it.

The Odyssey is a story that speaks powerfully to me. I fell in love with it due to the Coen Brother’s modern day adaptation “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”. A film that offers bitter sweet memories for me. You see the film always brings Ethan to my mind, a song from it was played at his funeral “Fly Away, Oh Fly Away.” The seagull on the beach in Blackpool got me to think of him too, I felt his presence there and then. I always do when I feel a little lost.

Birds are just as important to me today as the sea is. They keep calling me too. In many traditions the bird is of course a symbol of the soul and as I have said before it was Ethan, in his short life, who showed me how to connect to my soul and to the universal soul that I call God.

We can all connect to that that is deep within us and all life. No matter how far we get blown off course we can return home. We cannot control the wind, we do not get to choose what happens to us; but we do get to choose how we respond to these event. We can set our sails accordingly.  Remember Odysseus and his crew were given directions on how to avoid the sirens but most of the crew chose to ignore this advice and as a result they perished.

These days I try to head the call, however it comes to me; whether it’s the call from the sea or the birds in the air or the birds in the tree, or from the folk around me. Yes sometimes I still go off on my own and I get lost and sometimes I even flee but eventually I remember that everything I’m searching for is already here. The gifts are bountiful and all around me, I’ve just got to open my eyes and see.

Love is universal it is open to all, no one is excluded from it and no one can flee its range and reach. All that we have to do is learn to recognise it, because I know that sometimes it is hard to see. Even so it is always there calling, calling us out to sea.