I love water, but I also fear it. That same ocean that makes me feel alive when I swim in the shallow waters makes me very afraid if I get too far out and start feeling pulled by the current. Water is life, but it can also bring death.
So, as an outsider to the 5 elements system, I was intrigued to learn that the two emotions primarily associated with water are fear and reverence. As a Christian priest, I baptize children and adults with water that has been blessed with prayer. It is usually a joyful experience with a crowd all around on a Sunday morning, but occasionally parents come to the church in fear. My baby is going to have emergency surgery–will you baptize her now? The baptismal font is in that moment full of both hope and great fear.
I think about the passages in Jewish and Christian scripture that speak about the fear of the Lord. Sometimes practitioners of religion refer to themselves as God-fearing. I grew up afraid of God even as I was told that God loved me and that I needed to love God. How could I love what I fear?
I think this is a misunderstanding of spiritual fear. Pope Francis writes that the “fear of God” actually means a “joyful awareness of God’s grandeur and a grateful realization that only in [God] do our hearts find true peace.” Islam has a similar idea, called taqwa. In Arabic, it can mean fear, but it refers to being “aware of God, of truth, of the rational reality.”
But why do we use a word like fear to speak about awareness of Spirit, of life, of reality? Think about the word awe. It’s the root word for awful. To be full of awe is also associated with being full of dread, so much that awful is about experiencing something terrible.
Have you ever seen or heard or experienced something so beautiful that you actually needed to look away or take off your headphones because it was just so overwhelming? To be so full of awe that it becomes momentarily awful?
I see in such experiences a moment of unity with the divine. And in such moments, we can be overwhelmed by the truth of our existence–it is beautiful, but it is also painful. The first noble truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering.
The element of water invites us into contemplation, whether philosophical or spiritual. To ask the big questions in life. But contemplation is not only about active inquiry. It is also about being present to mystery. Spiritual practice is about cultivating our ability to stand in the presence of mystery and experience reverence. And when we enter into union with the divine at the heart of life, we also come to know our true selves. And that is a beautiful, but also fearful thing. Who am I? The great wisdom traditions teach us that the answer to that question is that we are one with the great mystery of life.
Here is a prayer that I find helpful:
Prayer for Quiet Confidence from the Book of Common Prayer.
O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved,
in quietness and confidence shall be our strength:
By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray,
to your presence,
where we may be still and know that you are God.
The Reverend Chase Danford 