Bonus Active Advent Reflection - Love and Water

Love in Water and Water in Love

As I was reading going through the devotional this week, I noticed a theme emerge that I didn’t consciously plan but showed up.  In a week focused on love, there were five of the seven images that had to do with water in some way - a waterfall in Yellowstone, a painting of feet washing, another waterfall, a chalice, and then a snowy frozen lake.  Then on Tuesday, we had our one clear morning and the reflections of the sunrise spoke to me deeply.  And then yesterday I’ll just throw in that two of my kids and me saw the new Avatar movie - The Way of Water.  So some kind of theme happening here.

What is the connection between them?  As I’ve reflected throughout the week on this, I wonder if there’s something about how we cannot live without water.  Water is essential to every part of life.  It refreshes, nourishes, provides, and transforms our lives.  It doesn’t always look that powerful but it is an immeasurably powerful force.  And when water is scarce, we see the ways that life breaks down.  Bodies weaken.  Ground dries and cracks.  Conflicts emerge.

In that last paragraph, replace water with love and it is pretty much the same.  We simply cannot live without love.  Yes we can get through life but time and time again we see how love is essential to the human experience, to healthy growth and development, and to the overall health of the world community.

In the CAC daily email on Tuesday, Ilia Dalio shares:

“To say “God is love” is to say that the name God refers to the divine energy of love that is dynamic, relational, personal, and unitive. God does what God is—love. Rather than seeing God as a separate being over the world, we can say that love-energy is the stuff of existence. . . . Where there is energy of attraction, union, generativity, and life, there is God. . . .” Reference

Love is vital to our experience, just as water is.  Here are two of the photos from Tuesday morning when I was seeing love in the water.