Blessing the Falls

Yesterday a bunch of us from church went to bless a waterfall, led by our intrepid priest.

What a trek!

One of the best parts was listening to the sounds of the ice breaking up--booming and resonant. Somebody somewhere must have created a musical recording comprised of ice sounds, but I couldn't find what I'm looking for by googling it. Where could it be?

Anyway, someone later asked me if the waterfall was in any way changed or improved by our having blessed it, or if it was we who were changed and improved.

I too wondered during the ceremony--is this water now going to be somehow different now in any quantifiable sense? If so, how?

After having pondered the question for a while, it now seems to me to be limited by linearity, a kind of two-dimensional cause-effect reductionism wholly unworthy of the (demonstrable, as in quantum physics) strangeness of reality.

We are called to be priests of all creation. Yes, something is changed--"Behold, I make all things new!"--but in a sense, it was always changed, from before eternity (Christ as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world).

O.k., would this then necessitate a circular as opposed to a linear representation?

Oh, how I would love a map, chart, or graph!

But that doesn't seem quite right, either.

It strikes me that to demand a breakdown of how this blessing, this priesthood, "works" is to take a step backward out of a multi-dimensional universe of participatory, transformative servanthood/contagious glory into a kind of mechanistic universe.

Anyway, I do love how the changes in the ice were so unpredictable--sometimes dramatic and crashing, even violent, sometimes gentle and melting/trickling.

And likewise, when the ice breaks up in our hearts, I think that the process is just as unpredictable (to us, not to the Holy Spirit). So when I see someone behaving in an uncharacteristic way, maybe I will have the grace to attribute that behavior to the breaking-up of her or his internal ice, and thus honor the ongoing mystery of the person's life.


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