Water and Spirit

In teaching a Confirmation class, I often ask the students to describe themselves in terms of water---what kind of water would they be?  I get wonderful answers from them:  ocean, open sea, river with rocks, quiet stream, estuary with baby fish, different forms of rain---and one student described himself as "a light coming through the mist."

The reason I ask them to do this is to try moving beyond physical appearance, beyond intellectual gifts and strengths, into the realm of spirit.  As a painter, I know when painting water that it must reflect what is immediately above it.  In open waters, we see the condition of the sky above, clear or overcast.  In more secluded bodies of water, we see trees or the color of birds reflected.  In that respect, water is a wonderful analogy for the spirit God has placed in us.

No one has ever described him/herself to me in terms of stagnation, dirty pond scum that reflects nothing above, but only contamination below.  Like ponds with no outlet, however, people that live only for and to themselves tend to grow stagnant, without life.  Eventually, very little can live in stagnant, non-moving water, and the water can no longer reflect what is above and around it; it is closed in on itself.

If we open ourselves to gaze at the visible world with love and attention, it has much to teach us about the invisible and spiritual world.  Psalm 19 says it directly:

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or langauge

where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

Again, St. Ignatius of Loyola, echoes the thought of Psalm 19 and carries it one step further:

Consider that God, your benefactor, is present in all creatures and in yourself.

If you look at every step of the visible creation, in all you will meet God.

God is in you; and, collecting all these degrees of being scattered through the rest of creation,

God unites them in you.

There is a reason that mankind is called "Homo sapiens---wise creature, or wise man."   Alone among all the creatures, mankind has the ability to gaze with love on the created world, to appreciate its lessons and beauty, and to see meaning in it.  God unites all of creation in the soul of man; He uses creation, if we care to observe, to teach wisdom to man.  If we want to understand the spiritual world that we cannot see, we must learn to look deeply into the visible world before us.  If we want to assume our role as co-creators with God, we must become contemplative beings.

The more we "look with love," the more we see, and the more we are able to see.  Out of our awareness and understanding emerges the ability to see even more, and to make wise choices for ourselves and our world.  God can use each one of us as a "base of operation" to bless the entire world---but first, the deep waters within us must begin to as clearly as possible reflect the world above us.