Confluence ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church
September 8, 2019
Deep in the Amazon, vast rivers meet and mingle their waters. The tributaries that ultimately combine to form the Amazon River begin in the highlands of South America, and as they flow downward the waters take on different colors due to the quantity of silt or decaying vegetation they carry with them. And so, when the Rio Negro, the Black River, meets the murky Solimoes to form the Amazon, the different color waters travel side by side for miles before completely mingling. The effect can be explained by science, of course, explained by different flow rates and water temperatures, but the effect is visually magical.
We are fascinated by these confluences, these spots where two rivers converge and become one new river. Sometimes a confluence isn’t two rivers, but a river meeting the sea, as in our poem, The Mississippi River Enters the Gulf. Wherever it takes place, there is a sense of something mysterious taking place. In many locations parkland is established at the point of confluence, so that it may be seen and experienced. We pause and wonder: where does one body of water become another? Why are the colors of the water so different? How do they ultimately mingle?
The sense of magic can be heightened by religious belief. For some people rivers are holy; for example, the River Ganga in India, the Ganges, is considered to be a Hindu goddess – Ganga-ji. People bathe in the water as a spiritual practice. For these people, a ritual bath at a confluence of two bodies of water creates an even holier experience – the opportunity to touch, to be immersed in, two holy sources at once. The sense of magic becomes spiritual as well as merely visual.
Today is a day when we pause to think about the mystery and the magic of water. Water: one of the most mundane, ordinary substances on earth, and yet at the same time one of the most magical. It changes properties, from liquid to solid to vapor. It is life-giving and life-sustaining; we could not survive without it. And yet, as we saw so clearly this week, its power to destroy lives and property in a violent storm is like nothing else on earth. Water is to be consumed. Water is to be worshipped. Water is to be feared. We are grateful for it, we waste it, and we are afraid of it.
This power of water to enchant is nowhere more apparent than in the places where it converges, where we see the tidal creek at Good Harbor flowing into the ocean, where rivers of different colored water meet and ultimately merge. Water observed in these places reminds us of how changeable it is, how it flows and takes on different properties, different colors, how it responds to the mysterious pull of the moon. The poet told us that water is forever carrying yesterday forward. And so it has been since the beginning of time, when the water we have now somehow became part of our planet, part of the living system that sustains us here on Earth. We have all the water we had at the beginning of time. It changes shape and location, color and form. But it is always the same water. It never ceases, it never arrives, it is never finished, it carries all of life forward.
Why do we talk about this today? Where else can we find confluence? Well, a church community comes to mind. Here, we come together, each one unique, with different needs, desires, and skills. We float along side by side for a time, and then come together, creating relationships, learning to love one another, to help each other, to set aside differences in support of the larger community. We learn to flow in the same direction, to carry yesterday forward, to always be open to new streams entering the larger river of community. We recognize that each time a new source of water enters the riverbed we are different, changed by this new stream, whether blue or clear or sandy. This makes us stronger, helps us to provide the water needed to sustain more life in our community, both the church community and the global one.
My friends, may you think of us as a confluence of many streams, joining together to magically create a new whole, carrying us forward into the future. May you find this place one of nourishment, where your spirit can be sustained, where you can gain strength for the life that flows ever onward.
May it be so.
Amen.
