Bodies of Water
Note: This article is from my wonderful friend and editor, Marianne Abel-Lipschutz
A puddle is a scale model of the universe. Like the formlessness that became the heavens and the earth, a puddle starts shapelessly floating into a unique creation. Liquid spreads out gradually to the thinnest of edges where forces like gravity, pressure, and volume conform it to the land. A puddle in the driveway captivated me this spring after melting snow pooled and glittered with a sheen of hoar frost one morning. This ever-changing body of water became a companion that entertains me now when I work in the kitchen, inviting me to be curious about the world as it is and as I want it to be.
While reading at the table, I'd look out the window again after a while. Daytime air warmed the water. The glittery frost flattened into a solid pane of matte gray like the overcast sky. A sparrow dropped down from the electric cable overhead and walked around the edge of the puddle, assessing it. The bird drank the cold water and returned to its perch, ascending effortlessly upward in one swift gesture. It might be shallow, but this puddle is contemplative and generative, inspiring me with images of watering holes where massive creatures lower themselves gracefully into the coolness, so big that the birds who live on their backs float away. Water draws all of us into its circle because it’s alive.
Every rain creates a new puddle in the same spot. Water gathers in a depression at the bottom of a short concrete incline where the left car wheels displace a little more gravel off the driveway each time they roll through the turn up into the garage. Grading could level out the highs and lows, but eventually the dynamic process of life would gather a new puddle. It’s not a move towards improvement, nor a kind of progress or goal-seeking, but a truly neutral activity of forming, unforming, disappearing, and changing all in one process.
Water offers unlimited enchantment wherever we are on earth. In the beginning, there was God, darkness, and water. Chapter One, Verse Two of the Bible describes the opening scene: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” God created light next, separating it from darkness. Light, darkness, and water dominate life here. Our bodies, made in the image of the divine, are 60% water. Our lungs, through which we inhale and exhale the holy breath of God, are roughly 83% water. When we delight in water and light, separating them from darkness, we receive the glory of God.
Sharing this driveway puddle with birds highlights our common needs. I come to the edge too, not thirsty to sip cool water but to peer into the deepness beyond. I wonder what the birds see. My mind turns the wish into a time of respite on the agate-studded shores of Lake Superior or feeling the grainy sand between my toes in Pine Creek. Clear water is as welcoming as the open sky. Even when the puddle is as muddy as the great Mississippi or as dirty as a flooded field after torrential rain, just looking at water satisfies me. I come to refresh my spirit. God gives us water to experience his unlimited presence, a demonstration of his desire to be with us.
It’s invigorating to watch birds bathe. They take dry dust baths in another part of the driveway, flipping and flopping on the pulverized gravel in every direction except upside down like a puppy rolling in something that stinks. Stepping into the puddle is more formal, as if elegantly wading into the ocean from the beach. The bird shakes each leg, perhaps testing the temperature. Their beaks toss water up into the air as fast as possible like goofy jugglers, faster and faster as droplets fall, totally immersed in a private splash, shaking and shimmying like dancers. Liquid baths reshape and prime their feathers. They wave their wings and throttle their feathers, preening with expertly trained, miniscule muscles. It’s a high-speed act but there is no rush. Watching a bird experience pleasure is an intimate encounter.
After a storm, the puddle will stretch out, supplying a few days’ worth of water for the birds. Even the black mama cat who lives on the mile will come into the yard for a drink. Heavy downpours overflow the puddle until wet patches in the long driveway connect. Everything will be soggy and limp. Water slides eastward and slightly downhill, shining between the field rows heading east, running above ground like a river filling the waterway for the afternoon. Floods inundate nearby lowlands and creeks when massive storm systems empty the Midwestern sky.
One day the puddle is large and expansive; another day it shrinks through evaporation and filtration into the soil below. The small puddle goes stale and dries up before generating a smelly, lime-green scum. Eventually I see a sludge of crusted mud and grit. Eroded leaf shreds, mower clippings, small insects, and stones will take on the pattern of the tire tracks in the soft mud. In summer’s heat, crisp sheets of organic matter turn up at the edges like dirt flakes in a parched lake bed, emptied of life. I wonder where the smaller birds go when their oasis devolves into a wasteland.
Observing the neighborhood around the puddle teaches me things that may or may not matter. Birds can sip while keeping their toes dry, for example. Birds will share this small puddle but not the same space on an overhead electric line. A bird of one species will wait to drink until a bird of a different species finishes bathing. Daily visitors change with the seasons. Most of the smaller birds up to the size of cardinals stop by. The dazzling Barn Swallows don’t linger; they dip for a drink like Hummingbirds and dash off. Pigeons, Mourning Doves, Robins, and Killdeer, frequent flyers in our front yard, don’t use this small puddle. I suppose these larger birds drink in a creek half a mile away. Puddles are the only standing water nearby.
One morning something landed in the puddle out of the blue, surprising me as if cartoon word balloons that read “Plunk!” and “Kersplash!” also appeared. I couldn’t see what but I was sure something had actually landed, not fallen, into the water. The ripples calmed flat; nothing moved. This puddle is like water lapping a sandbar, limited in its ability to hide anything. Then a tiny button head popped up on the opposite side and just as quickly ducked underwater. I watched and studied the surface. A small wake directed my gaze from one side of the puddle to the other when I finally saw a classic swimmer’s frog kick propel the creature back again to the other side.
A frog!? I laughed out loud. How did this tiny frog even find this puddle? Where did it come from? My mind spoke up with a string of those not-readily-answered questions like where does food come from or how do birds sleep without falling. I chuckled. Back and forth, around the edges, across the stretch again, the frog swam enthusiastically. We might see three frogs a year, usually in the damp muck that collects behind the machine shed doors. Before I could think anymore about how this frog ended up in that pool, it disappeared into the grass. I’d be likely to step on it if I searched for it in the lawn. My penalty was to stand at the window and admit that I’d taken this small world for granted. I had neglected how important water is to God.
The puddle can be like an ordinary life: we just drive through it on our way to something else, sloshing the living water around. If a lake or an ocean disappeared the way a puddle does, surely we would notice. But would we live differently because of what we’ve seen? A rainbow splashed across the horizon after the torment of a storm makes us gasp with delight, a magnificent billboard written with drops of water in waves of light. We stop everything and gawk in wonder, awed and renewed.
Surprise is a simple and essential element in creation. I would never have enjoyed a moment in the world of this puddle if I’d sat on the other side of the table this spring. I would have missed how sunlight reaching a drop of dew is enough to bring glory alive on earth.
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