Baptised into the Living Water

I went down into the water

thinking it was something outside me,

something holy

that would wash over my skin.

But beneath the surface

I remembered—

I am water too.

More than half of this body,

this breathing, thinking, loving body,

is water:

ancient rain, forgotten rivers, oceans carried within me.

The water around me met the water within me

and there was no clear boundary

between the two.

Perhaps this is baptism:

not being taken out of the Earth,

but being plunged more deeply into it;

not receiving a holiness

that was absent before,

but awakening to the sacred flow

in which we have always lived.

I rise from the water

not separated,

but joined—

river to body, body to Earth, Earth to God.

Baptised into Christ.

Baptised into creation.

Baptised into the great living waters

that flow through us all.

John Power