The Holy Spirit Is a Rubber Duckie

When I was younger, I took showers that lasted forever.  I ran up my folks' water bill by sitting in the tub and enjoying the warm running water.  I would take the time to sing, or play out conversations, or just pray.  It annoyed the hell out of my mom, of course, but it was practically a spiritual discipline for me.  Something told me that God was in the water, all the little droplets, and I soaked it all up.

In the last few years, I've taken shorter showers, focused on the goal of cleanliness and dreading having to dry my thick hair.  I don't often take the time to luxuriate in the sacred waters.  I don't go swimming, though I used to love it.  Maybe I'm just resisting the vulnerability of being a raindrop away from God.

And yet I do, almost always, spend a minute in the shower trying to find that sweet spot in the shower spray.  Do you do this too, or am I just weird? Tilting your head back and swaying back and forth until you find the one angle at which the water hits your head perfectly to flow unbroken over your ears, so that all you can hear is the water and your own heartbeat.  I love that, and don't want to move or breathe in case I hear the break in the flow.

God is in the water.  Many of us are taught that God is omnipresent, always present and in everything.  And there's that one scene in V for Vendetta when the female lead stands in the storm and proclaims that "God is in the rain"; good stuff.*  

When I close my eyes and imagine my happy place, it always seems to be an inner tableau of a dark pool of water, in a forest rippling with moonlight.  Lots of lush greens and deep grays.  Silence.  

And when my husband and I get punch drunk envisioning all the things we'd want in a dream house, I always dwell on the idea of a big, deep bathtub, with a wide frame with room for flickering candles and a stereo to play watery music - probably Enya.  I would LIVE in that tub.  I'd lock the door, turn off the lights and float away.  I would spend every moment I could feeling warm and clean and safe and quenched.

Praise be to God.

* Except that, when you Google for an interpretation, folks conclude the words mean distressing things about the nature of God and suffering.  But that's a different, impending blog post.