First, during the prayers of the people, we were called to a long silence during which we were to hold our Haitian brothers and sisters up before God. During the second, we remembered murder victims in the city of Louisville after hearing the Cathedral bells toll for the dead. These moments of silence were offered as a prayerful space in which to absorb the pain of our neighbors, near and far, and to unite our intentions in a moment of intercession on behalf of their suffering. Silence can be hard. We don't always know what to do with it. Sometimes we want to hear something and it just doesn't emerge. Sometimes we can't quiet our thoughts long enough to engage the restfulness silence promises. Sometimes silence too quickly exposes the pained cries of our own heart.
This day, however, there was not really silence. Both of these prayer-filled pauses were also filled with the sound of running water.
The running water of the baptismal font is always in the background of our life together at the Cathedral. It greets each person that enters our doors. Its water flows continuously, pouring into the octagonal pool below, reminding the baptized of their new life in Christ and welcoming the stranger into the family of God. It proclaims to those who dip their fingers in it that our imagined separation from God and our neighbors has been washed away in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that even death no longer has power over us. "Nothing," it preaches, "can ever come between us and the love of God."
And so a moment which could have simply memorialized the power of sadness and loss was filled instead with a reminder of our unending life in the God who is living water for all who thirst. Thanks be to God.
Amy+
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