Watching the water

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:21-22)

On a hot June day, I visited the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism. Standing thigh deep in the Jordan River, I marked the foreheads of fellow pilgrims with the sign of the cross, my right side soaked as I reached into the stream over and over to make sure each one got suitably wet.

It’s impossible to say how our baptismal remembrance affected the 18 or so who stood with me in the river. The charter bus appeared to ferry us to the next holy site before we could gather our thoughts, let alone risk sharing them. Vulnerability is hard.

I didn’t want to go, then or now. I wanted to stay there, sit on the bank and watch the water flow south, carrying my mind into the depth of my heart.

And I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be there … with Jesus.

Even now, more than six years later, I imagine myself sitting there, beside Jesus, silent, as he prays, knowing only that I don’t know what to say, what to ask, or quite how I feel, except that I want to be there … with him … because being with him, feeling him near, I know that I don’t need to know what to say or what to do or what to ask … because I have what my heart needs.

It's like having loved someone for a very long time and feeling them love you for a very long time. When they are gone … for a few hours … or days … let alone forever … you feel incomplete, wanting only to touch them again, see their smile and feel their presence in the house because the rooms begin to echo with an emptiness only they can fill.

I suppose that’s the way human hearts are made, needy and always needing. Only fools deny this. The wise embrace it, letting their need lead them to love’s fulfillment, which is the only thing capable of filling the emptiness.

Follow your need far enough, and you might begin to realize you crave a love from which nothing, not even death can separate you, a love from which all love comes and to which every love points.

And this is why I go back, if only in my imagination, to sit on the bank watching the water. For Jesus came there, stood in the river among a bunch of people like me, shadowed by death, bearing the weight of their sins, longing for release.

Sitting beside him, heaven’s voice lingering in his ears, both of us enveloped in the warm rays of divine love, there is nothing to say or do. It’s enough just to be there … with him.