"Into the River"

There is a river

Cool cleansing water that splashes over us,

Flows around us,

Moves past all times and places,

Over rocks,

through mountains,

into oceans, seas and lakes.

It is absorbed into the atmosphere,

Pours out into reservoirs,

 flows into pipes, and is poured into fonts.

This water is a marking water.

 It cleanses,

 claims,

 and calls each member of humanity

 into a new mission of rejuvenation and hope.

This water is a binding water,

It begins at the genesis of time and flows over and under and past

the ancestors of long ago.

Today as I begrudingly did my time on the treadmill, I watched the rain fall and puddle in the midst of an afternoon storm.  As I watched the rain, I thought of the the rain cycle, thought the struggle for water in some place,

 thought of how we pollute,

 and abuse our supply,

thought of my friend from India, Ren, who told me that water was so precious that they would never get in and play in it like the youth group she visited here in the USA did.

I love the rain.

I love to hear it fall,

I love the clean smell it provides,

there is absolutely nothing better than to curl up with a

good book, pull the covers up, crack the window and go on

an adventurous journey of the intellect--all the while the sound of rain hits the pain.

Water in the Christian tradition respresents renewal, claiming, and communal binding. 

 This is the way we recieve our "mark" if you will. 

 In watching the rain, I began to reflect upon my own baptism as a child---while I now am a firm believer in infant baptism, I'm glad I have the memory of the time I stepped into the ancient flow of water.

It was a warm day, my best friend Tami  and her brother Daryl had traveled with our families a long distance from our home in Western Ky to that river in Montaray Tennesee.  I did not grow up Presbyterian, and my father was a minister in another denomination that embraced believer’s baptism. ….

Between you and me…..even as a child,

I always had a sense of who I belonged to…whose I was….long before we drove to that river located at the top of the mountain.

My friend and her brother had decided that they would be baptized in the river where all their family had been immersed.

That day…my dad walked us down to the river…that river in Tennessee and we lined up…

Lined up along the banks of a river that flowed….

families were picknicking along the banks under the bridge and as we held hands and waded into the cold flowing stream, I could feel the cold slimy rocks of ages flow under my barefeet….

The play on the side of the banks seemed to stop and it seemed to me that for just a few minutes the whole world stopped…..

As we reached the center of the flow, Dad raised his hands to the sky and prayed a prayer.  I don’t’ remember what he said and then he placed a handkerchief over my nose and mouth and buried in the water….

Buried me under the water of ancestors long ago…

And the Water of the Creator flowed over me

And when I came up, there I stood connected to the water people of all time and place….

And the River flows,

Moves,

Washes, claims and ebbs.

And

“Eventually, all things emerge into the ONE who chooses,

and a river runs through it

and

around us.

It cuts rocks created by the worlds great flood and runs

Over and under the basement of all time."*

Timeless raindrops

Endless touches of love dew

Marking us, claiming us, choosing us, commissioning us into the body of Christ, marking us to be vessels of God’s ageless and undying love.

So whether we enter the River at the top

 of a mountain in our barefeet

or are carried to the font by our proud parents,

We step into the water with Jesus,

And the water rushes over us,

All of us

All of us in the line of humanity,

Baby of saint,  tan or white or black or red or green,

Strong or weak, bold or scared,

When we step into the ageless water,

 We are claimed and initiated into a whole new family called the human race,

Where there are no coincidences or strangers,

Just family whose names we don’t know yet

 and we are bound

 by the river that binds.

*this line derived from the line in a movie the River Runs though it"