Beginning in Lent and continuing into Easter, CCA is featuring a series of weekly reflections written by CCA members serving in diverse contexts, who are living the vision of the Appalachian pastoral letters within and outside the region. In today’s fifth contribution to this series, michael black offers an honest meditation on water and life.

Lately, i have been struggling – struggling to feel rooted living in a place i don’t consider home, to find inner peace while struggling with mental illness, to find the “real” during this time of lenten prayer and reflection with the omnipresence of so many spaces of hurt, division, pain and suffering in this world. Yet in this struggle sometimes i can make out the tune of creation that runs through the Appalachian pastorals.

More specifically the ongoing process of creation (i once had a professor who insisted, “don’t say ‘God created;’ say ‘God IS creating.’”); creation is intimate and relational and therefore a process because relationships grow as one being discloses itself more to another. We are all on a journey, all manner of things are on a journey to becoming really real, that is to say, to becoming agents of light and love in this place, which calls me back to the hope-filled words of the shepherd prophet Amos “[...] let justice surge like waters, and righteousness like an unfailing stream.”

These words, and my love for sitting and watching water flow, have been a constant source of hope in my life. The God of love is a mighty river, justice is a mighty river! Peace is a river flowing constantly, constantly in process. In some places the flow is fast, and turbulent, tumbling ever forward; in other places, slow and gentle, but always flowing, washing against rocks and stony places big and small. And, in this light i see both my interior and exterior world in process.

Water slowly erodes, moves, and reshapes, ultimately breaking down rocks and these stony places and washing them by the waters of renewal. So too do the waters of love and justice crash against my walls, perceptions, my hatreds and fears, ultimately my stony heart (re: “take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh”) until it hopefully one day will be made smooth, or at least smoother – remember, this is a process – and can join in the symphony of rushing water that is the song of peace, justice, and love washing against the evils of this world. And in this song of ongoing creation is interwoven ongoing redemption by the same creator God. And there i find unshakable hope.

michael black was a transplant to Appalachia through serving with Nazareth Farm in North Central West Virginia, where he found a spiritual home to worship in "nature's cathedral with sun splattered leaves as stained glass, and misty mountain haze as incense" (At Home in the Web of Life). Now he works as a seasonal farmer in upstate New York, though he longs for a day when he hears a call to return to the hills and hollers of the mountain state. He cherishes dearly the people he met and their stories, and memories of places.