At the Service of Meditations and Sacrament at Church of the Ascension tonight, we were encouraged to think about rivers - John was baptizing people in the Jordan, in the day's Gospel. So I did.
I pictured living along one of the great rivers, ever flowing in one direction. I wondered how and why and when it mattered where the rivers came from and went, out of sight. I remembered the Ganga at Varanasi, and the things floating by. I thought of the plants which live clustered in rivers like the Amazon, how quickly they must grow, but also how long they might have. I thought of the meander of rivers which cross flat plains, looping over time, imagining the way fat and lean years might affect the course. I pondered the first rivulet of what would become a river, inching across a flat surface. I remembered discussions about where rivers start, the mythology around Kailas as the home of great rivers, and the way Ganga really is the name of the whole water cycle, the monsoon its main source rather than the Himalaya, its main property soaking rather than flowing. I thought of rivers in deserts, whose water all comes from elsewhere, and a song I still remember singing in choir in high school.
As torrents in summer,
Half dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, though the
Sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;
So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o'erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not
That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining!
(I remembered it as Brahms but it was actually Elgar, to words of Longfellow - in a poem, appropriately enough, about John the Baptist!) I thought of what happens when rivers come together, as at Allahabad, their waters mingling (though I didn't think of the third, invisible river, the Saraswati), and of how the boats that float down a river like the Mississippi got back up it before the age of steamships.
I returned to those living on a river, ever flowing past from somewhere unseen to somewhere else, always in the same direction - though my thoughts were briefly diverted to tidal rivers like our own Hudson, at least a few miles of which flow in different directions each day, and to the tidal bore I once saw hurrying up a dry riverbed in Nova Scotia. And finally I ruminated on how differently one might picture the ways of the world if one was raised on a riverbank rather than, as I was, on the shore of an ocean, where the water comes at you before returning to its own vastness in an endless repetition.
I pictured living along one of the great rivers, ever flowing in one direction. I wondered how and why and when it mattered where the rivers came from and went, out of sight. I remembered the Ganga at Varanasi, and the things floating by. I thought of the plants which live clustered in rivers like the Amazon, how quickly they must grow, but also how long they might have. I thought of the meander of rivers which cross flat plains, looping over time, imagining the way fat and lean years might affect the course. I pondered the first rivulet of what would become a river, inching across a flat surface. I remembered discussions about where rivers start, the mythology around Kailas as the home of great rivers, and the way Ganga really is the name of the whole water cycle, the monsoon its main source rather than the Himalaya, its main property soaking rather than flowing. I thought of rivers in deserts, whose water all comes from elsewhere, and a song I still remember singing in choir in high school.
As torrents in summer,
Half dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, though the
Sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;
So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o'erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not
That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining!
(I remembered it as Brahms but it was actually Elgar, to words of Longfellow - in a poem, appropriately enough, about John the Baptist!) I thought of what happens when rivers come together, as at Allahabad, their waters mingling (though I didn't think of the third, invisible river, the Saraswati), and of how the boats that float down a river like the Mississippi got back up it before the age of steamships.
I returned to those living on a river, ever flowing past from somewhere unseen to somewhere else, always in the same direction - though my thoughts were briefly diverted to tidal rivers like our own Hudson, at least a few miles of which flow in different directions each day, and to the tidal bore I once saw hurrying up a dry riverbed in Nova Scotia. And finally I ruminated on how differently one might picture the ways of the world if one was raised on a riverbank rather than, as I was, on the shore of an ocean, where the water comes at you before returning to its own vastness in an endless repetition.
