Sweet Water: Cold and Sweet

Dates are hard for me, but April 30, 1972, is easy to recall because I went down to the river to be baptized. I still remember Dad lowering me under the brown, cold water at the conjunction of two West Virginia streams.

I saw a fish leap over me as I went under the water. What did that mean? Wags (looking at you dear brother) suggested I had scared that old fish out of that river. The muddy water, full of clay, washed over me and I felt numb. Something was different, but I was not sure what. Someone asked me how I felt as I came up the bank and my answer was: “Cold.”

It was true, but incomplete and I have been sorry ever since that I could not tell Papaw just what I felt. He knows now anyway.

We went home and I had to go out into the yard to clean up some sticks we had been using in one of our many battles. While out there picking up those sticks, I could still feel the sweet water and suddenly the feeling was glorious.

I was baptized.  The world felt the same, but deeper, more intense, colder, yet sweeter. It still does.

God had come and washed away my sins. What sins? Was I morbid? What could I have done at eight? Certainly no autobiography worthy evils, not even artful dodging, and I was not a sad kid, in fact, my childhood was so happy it breeds suspicion in the cynical! Mom and Dad were great parents and there was nothing morbid or depressing in my life. We loved Christmas, Dad and Mom would rap (the sixties name for the dialectic!) with anyone, and my grandparents were delightful.

Still there was something missing, a knowledge that what should be was not what was. I wanted more . . . to be more. This was different than playing at superheroes (my favorite was Superman and the Flash). That was a desire to be special, but this was not the feeling I am trying to describe.

At eight I knew that there was more: God was there, but God and I were not yet on speaking terms. He loved me, but something was awry, nobody had to tell me that, it just was. Laying on my back looking at the blue skies with clouds after Dad had cut the grass, when we rolled down the hill and would turn green, made heaven real to me. Of course, Heaven was not just “up,” but it was other, out there.

Me? I was not “there” and I wanted to be. God was calling, I could sense God, but not hear Him. Pardon my prose . . . it is hard to say just what one felt at eight. I could feel the blue, the clouds, the sky, and God was there.

Yet I also knew that I was still outside. I had to decide, not if God was real, I knew God was real by experience, but if I wanted to do what I should instead of being what I was.

Should. Is. Ought.

Hell was for those who got stuck on the is and never got to the ought. Some people are afraid of Hell in a toxic way. I was afraid of Hell like I was afraid of tornados: there is a bad thing that exists. The good news was that, unlike tornados, a boy could do something about Hell.

Odd to say, but Hell has never bothered me as it does some. Is Hell just? How could a good God . . . ? Hell seemed sensible to me: Hell is what happened if you did not say “yes.” God let you say “yes” or “no.” Someplace had to be for those who stuck with “no” in the face of the blue, the clouds, God.

I remember Dad preaching a powerful sermon and also recall resisting the call to pray. Come forward? Not yet. Why rush? I was only eight, but I wanted Jesus and so after going to bed I came back out and crawled up into Daddy’s lap and asked him how I could know Jesus.

Daddy helped me and we prayed. That next Sunday we went down to the river and the water was cold, but sweet.

And so it has been for the next forty-six years. The truth, Dad always said take the truth no matter how difficult, can be cold, but it is always sweet. The water wakes you up, you go out to do your job, and then you suddenly can hear.

It was glorious, a bit like music, I can feel it, but not say what I heard. Years of examination, the hardest thinking I could do, and still the water is sweet, cold and sweet.

I went down to the river and came back a boy and now in what my mother calls the youth of old age, I can say that the water is still sweet.