“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
—Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
In a previous career, I was responsible for the student housing on a university campus. One autumn, shortly after first-year students moved in, we had a torrential rainfall. I received a call that one freshman’s room had a leak that had damaged his electronics, books, and carpet. Our facilities staff cleaned the room and did their best to find and fix the problem. Unfortunately, with the next rainfall, the room leaked again. This time, the young man’s parents called and asked for him to be moved to another room.
A month or so passed, then another storm crashed overhead. The same student sought me out, saying that his new room had begun leaking. Despite everything our maintenance staff tried, we could not stop the leak. Eventually, we moved the young man to a different building.
That fall commenced my education about, and appreciation for, water’s ability to flow regardless of obstacles. After nearly a year, we discovered that the leak that had plagued both of the freshman’s assigned rooms was caused by a masonry crack at the sixth floor north end of the brick building. The two leaking rooms were at the south end of the building, on the first and second floors. Once we found the point of entry, we were able to finally fix the leak.
I learned some important lessons from that process (when enough time had passed for me to be able to look at it with equanimity). As the Margaret Atwood quote above says, water flows. Water understands how to be patient, but also that patience doesn’t mean coming to a stop. Water knows its strength, which allows it to give way, to flow around, rather than to insist on flowing through just to prove it can.
When, recently, I came across this quote from Cynthia Bourgeault, I was reminded of those long-ago lessons from a water leak:
“There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual interabiding which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love. We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow …”
— Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus
I love that phrase, “mutual interabiding” describing the unity and flow of our relationship with God. It is the nature of both water and love to flow, but love has a strength that surpasses water’s. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:7–8). In times such as these that challenge our patience and call on all of our internal reserves, it is good to be reminded to have patience and to allow love’s flow to carry us forward—even though it may take us places we would never have anticipated going.
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director