Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
There are those
moments
when we want somebody in the water with us
By Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Diocesan Life, December 2005
Elizabeth was in real danger of drowning. The rest of us kids at
the church youth event were terrified, both for her and for ourselves.
It was the late 1950s. Today's strict standards for supervision of
youth were not in place. The nearest grown-up was out of earshot,
reading in a folding lawn chair. I remember us, in our impotence
to help, shouting things to like, "Kick, Elizabeth." My
friend Mike added encouragingly, "You can make it." I recall
shouting earnestly, if pointlessly, "Swim!"
Either terror or cramps made Elizabeth unable to act on any of our
sage advice. None of us were strong swimmers or had a clue about
lifesaving. We continued to shout, with increasingly bleating tones.
I knew I should just get in the water and help her, but was paralyzed
by the stories I'd heard at home of people who drowned while trying
to save others.
This became my first experience of sickening terror as I began to
believe that we would lose her.
I remember the gray sky, the chilly breeze, and my feeling of stupid
useless helplessness. Most of all I remember the paddling and splashing
sounds that were not coming from Elizabeth's location.
Of course, I am telling you this story because we did not lose her.
An older kid who was coming to get his boat saw the situation. He
did not shout advice or say anything - he got into the water and
towed Elizabeth to the little dock from which we had been diving.
She had been only twenty feet or so from us, but we did not know
how to help her and were afraid of being pulled down if we tried.
So near and yet so far: we could have given her good advice right
up to the moment she died. The person who made the difference was
the one who silently got into the water with her.
After he pulled her out we thanked him and he almost completely suppressed
a contemptuous twist of his mouth. He gave us some instructions on
how to get her warm and back to the adults, and exited our lives.
There are many times in life that call for wisdom. There are those
moments, however, when we need somebody in the water with us if the
situation is to change.
I never had the nerve or the vocabulary to ask Elizabeth how it felt
to be alone in the water, or what it felt like when the young man
joined her. (I certainly never asked her what she thought of us standing
on the dock yelling at her.)
That fall I left for boarding school. I never saw her again except
at the other side of church at holidays. I do know, however, what
it feels like to stand alone at terrible places in life, places where
advice is pointless and companionship is everything.
Muslims, Jews, and Christians revere the words of Isaiah, who spoke
to humanity's need for something beyond words in naming a child Immanuel
- "God is with us"- to a frightened king. Christians see
that theme played to its fullest crescendo in the birth of Jesus
the Messiah, "God with us" for all humanity.
The ideal of a divine figure experiencing human birth without human
fathers is not unknown in world religions - but something is different
here. In telling the story of Bethlehem, the virgin, the star, and
the Magi, Christians try to make two points.
The first is that, although God had given advice in many and various
ways through prophets, when the point was to be made for all time,
God got into the water with us in the birth of a fragile and vulnerable
human baby, who lived our life and died our death and has gone to
the fullness of new life ahead of us. There is no part of human experience,
from its joys to its horrors, from which God wishes to remain aloof.
The second point is that, when they insist that the Christ was a
real human being, Christians see the affirmation of human worth.
That the creator would take up the reality of the creature expresses
a dignity of human life that is absolute.
When they take their own rhetoric seriously on this point, Christians
must see each life as sacred. Whenever the Christian religion has
been used to justify harm or neglect, it has been defiled. When it
is employed to help people experience their worth in God's sight,
the music is being played well.
In the months between Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, there is
plenty of time to observe what that child grew up to do and say.
In December it is enough to remember my drowning friend and recall
that in a world full of advice-givers, God still wants to be in the
water with each of us. Merry Christmas!
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