Ah, water - my column in The Melbourne Anglican

If there’s water available, I want to be in it. My beloved and I are not long back from a few lovely, languid days in Port Douglas, at the end of a particularly gruelling time at work for us both. We spent half our time there exploring the Daintree Rainforest; reflecting on the highlights of our time away, my top of the list was obvious – the swim we had in the river at Mossman’s Gorge.

Once I have walked a place, I feel I know it a little – swimming is a yet more immersive way of feeling a part of somewhere. Sixteen years ago, when we took our four little kids camping around Kakadu and WA for three months, what we mostly did was swim: walk to a waterhole early, before the heat, and then spend the next few hours in the water. What brought a keen, almost spiritual rush to each of us were the times we managed to swim behind waterfalls, an activity we called ‘getting the blessing of the falls’.

On an overseas trip two years ago, I made sure I swam everywhere it was possible to – at the Hampstead Heath ponds, in the frigid water off the Isle of Skye, in the Irish Sea at Dublin, on the beach at Barcelona.

I’m a pathetic swimmer; I simply love being immersed in water (the wonders of creation – who could have dreamed up such an element?!) It makes me feel like a kid again; in the surf I can barely help shrieking and cavorting like a toddler with sheer exuberant joy.

It tends to be kids who can’t keep away from water – the grown ups are more sensible and restrained, and swimming is one of the ways I get in touch with my inner child. Maybe it goes back to being in utero – the first world I ever knew, even if I can remember nothing of it except this feeling of being safe and supported and carried. When I was heavily pregnant myself, water was the only place I didn’t feel like a hippopotamus. It also mirrored the feeling I imagined the little stranger inside me had, curled tightly in its own private swimming pool.

Of course, there’s something spiritual in it too. ‘In God we live and move and have our being,’ was a text that came alive for me when I was with child. The foetus within was living, moving and having its being in me, and in turn, I visualised myself as immersed in the totality of a loving Mother God – surrounded and nurtured and protected by Her even when I wasn’t thinking about it.

There is good reason for water being one of the main Christian symbols. Each time I swim, especially in natural water, it puts me in mind of the way I am buoyed up, cleansed, and delighted by God’s love, which surrounds me even when I am least mindful of it.

Published in the November edition of The Melbourne Anglican

Comments

[Rod]

Amen Clare. and it is no accident that Christian faith has water as a primary element.

[Sally Polmear]

Lovely reflection (!) Clare. Thank you. In the Mindful Meditation class I ran last week, a major theme were the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space. I had a blue silk sari stretched along the floor in the middle of the circle to represent a river of water, or the ocean, plus symbols around it for the other elements (stone, candle flame, feather, flowers, shell). It felt good to dwell in contemplation of the elements and how our bodies are made up of them all. Beats getting caught up in ruminating obsessive thought! I enjoyed reading of your delight in water.