Practicing the Watery Presence

In his devotional classic, The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence reflects on the spiritual discipline of finding and praising God in the ordinary acts of daily living -- peeling the potatoes, washing the dishes. I was, I suppose, talking to God last night, but more after the fashion of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof than Brother Lawrence in the kitchen.

The drain pipe into which the washing machine evacuates was misbehaving, puddling the floor with each load like a happy-to-see-you puppy, so I withdrew the rubber hose from the washer in order to make a run through the pipe with the drain snake. Finishing -- or at least tiring of -- that work, I retracted the yards of cable, set aside the snake, began another load of laundry and went back upstairs to help Lori process the fresh produce she had brought home from the farm. Time passed, and I estimated that the laundry was ready to shift over to the dryer, so I trotted back downstairs...

...to find Lake Kenmore. Of course I had neglected to return the rubber drain hose to the freshly cleared drain pipe. Towels were employed. A sponge mop. Frequent squeezing into the drain. Eventually -- and after animated and colorful conversation with the Divine -- I remembered that several years ago, in the wake of a similar misadventure, I had bought a shop vac now, I discovered, secreted in the deepest recess of the narrowing space beneath the stairs. Beyond a book case and two clothes racks. Sloshing back, I retrieved the appliance (neglecting to gather up the extension pipe) rearranged some plugs and fired it up. Two tankfulls later the floor was merely damp. I left two fans in motion to finish up the recovery and slogged my way upstairs toward bed, the clock a few ticks into the new day.

A night's rest and a cup of coffee later, I'm thinking about this whole "practicing the presence" idea. Since it is entirely likely -- probable in fact -- that I will wreak this kind of havoc again, I'm sure God would appreciate it if grew more proficient in this active form of praying.


That, and finding a readier place to store the shop vac.

The Both/And of Living High

Capricious. I'm talking about myself, of course. Our townhome sits high on a rise, facing north across the city. Our windows look out into the fullness of surrounding trees -- above more than a few of them. The skyline unfolds across the way, and when the trees are not in full leaf we can look across the way and see the nearby lake. It's beautiful, the view.

But several times each winter, when the freezing rain and compacted snow makes of it a ski run, I curse the altitude and the sloping road that climbs it. After sliding my way back down the hill and claiming a parking space in the church lot a block away, I mutter profanity beneath my breath every slogging footstep up the hill. It inevitably happens just after I have been to the grocery store and I have a car full of sacks to lug up with me. On those nights I loathe our hillside perch. Who thought living here would be a good idea?

But this week the landscape below us is flooding -- that scenic lake and the rivers that feed it have become voracious beasts consuming more and more of the real estate around them. Roads are closed. Downtown has been evacuated. Homes are damaged. Sandbags barricade countless openings. Routes and routines are sorely disrupted. Farms are destroyed.

Meanwhile, we live high above it all; far above the standing water and the currents and the damage. Winter's sliding long forgiven and forgotten, what a wonderful place to live! Who had the brilliance of forethought to live here?

As I say, capricious. Enjoy and appreciate it now. It will offer something to remember next winter.

The Cloying Silence of Powerlessness

The news helicopter hung overhead, staring – suspended; paralyzed in mid-air as though hypnotized by the inundation. The major thoroughfare below, threatened and narrowed for days, was finally overtaken. The river had steadily risen and swelled over the past week, creeping inexorably up to and then over its banks, spilling first over the walking path before climbing, Sunday evening, up the rise and over the street. The barricades were assembled, detours directed, and police officers positioned. The water level at the reservoir north of town continues to rise. The rivers into town continue to bloat. The currents, gathering momentum like an urban mob, rage and rip and smother and uproot. Bridges downtown have been closed, and a kind of frenetic stillness settles upon the city, as though we are holding our breath. And overhead, the helicopter – mirroring the rest of us – simply hangs there; staring; filming perhaps, for there is little else to do.

There is a sense of powerlessness that meets the rising river levels. Sure, there are sandbags to fill and lug and stack in prayerfully strategic locations; there are jugs of water to stockpile and pantry staples to gather…just in case. There are basement boxes to elevate and alternate routes to anticipate. But while they are important precautions, they are finally impotent gestures designed to cope. They will not, we know, influence the outcome. The water rises, just as the wind blows, as it wills.

Though we have endured flooding before, we will never get used to its humbling force. Perhaps we are genetically incapable of psychologically accommodating impotence. We are wired to imagine and invent and engineer our way into control, and then lull ourselves into believing we have accomplished it.

Perhaps that is why we now find ourselves simply hovering overhead – staring; mutely and tragically awed by the raging and irrefutable demonstration of the fact that we haven’t. I suspect we will never make peace with our own vulnerability, or our inability to finally and successfully engineer our way out of it.

Mortality, all the sandbags in the world notwithstanding, can be the pits.

The water levels are still rising, it’s raining again, and who knows when the roads may reopen – or what, when they do, what we will drive along them to find.