Water

I took an extra-long morning walk today because it's just too beautiful for words outside. I did my normal route down Clark Street in Andersonville with a stop for a coffee on the way, then felt this irresistible urge to see the lake, so I walked down to Foster Beach. The lake was stunning today, bright blue and constantly throwing small, choppy white waves toward the sand.

And it made me think, it's amazing how magnetic water is for all of us living beings. We depend on it, we are made of it. It has such raw power, so much teeming energy. It comforts and nurtures, disrupts and breaks. It's no wonder that the way we as humans understand the world has water in such a central role, as such a broadly applied metaphor. In Christianity, we have baptism. And perhaps more useful than thinking of it as a cleansing is thinking of it as an invitation of the fluid, rhythmic, transformative power of water into our lives. The recognition of life as dynamic, not static. Of the need to be responsive to the undulations of something bigger that we're part of, rather than trying to harness for our own purposes something that's not within our own power. I stood and looked out across the lake, at the waves breaking near my feet, and was overwhelmed by gratitude for the water and for the joy of living in a world with such beauty and potential. It's better than any world I could dream up and control myself, and what a gift it is to be part of it.