Many Waters: floods and faith

Here on the Durham peninsula, we live with water all the time. As the River Wear, it flows round the rocky acropolis on which Cathedral and Castle sit. When it is in spate, you can hear it in the cloister, tumbling noisily over the weir between the Mill House and the Old Fulling Mill. When the river is very high it goes quiet again, for then the weir becomes just a wrinkle across the smooth fast surface of the flow.

However, all this is happening far below. The river remains confined to its gorge, kept in its place as rivers are meant to be. What we have seen in Somerset and across the south of England is water that bursts out of its proper bounds. And then it is not simply unwelcome but frightening, a power that is as relentless and destructive as hurricane or wildfire.

When I am walking past the mill, I sometimes think about one of my favourite novels, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. In that story, the mill is Tom and MaggieTulliver’s home. Never mind the plot (read it for yourself) in which river and mill play a central part. During the story, Tom and Maggie become estranged. At the climax, the river floods and the mill is swept away. Tom and Maggie’s boat capsizes and sinks, but not before Tom and Maggie are reconciled and drown in a tender embrace.

The novel is set in the Lincolnshire fens, not the Somerset Levels. But it captures so much of what people have been suffering in Somerset where life is imitating art in a terrible way. But there’s a point at which art and life differ. In the book, the flood brings about a reconciliation, and by implication, something new and better is coming to birth. It’s the same in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung where the old order of the gods is swept away by fire and flood and a new humanity is born. But in Somerset, there is no redemption, at least not yet. People continue to be overwhelmed, week after week, submerged beneath cold, filthy, hateful waters that simply refuse to go away.

George Eliot and Richard Wagner were drawing on ancient mythological archetypes in their art. The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis story of the flood are among the oldest narratives in the world. The Bible is witness to the primordial fear the Hebrews had of waters that transgressed their limits and would not stay where they belonged. ‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring’ (Psalm 93.3). To them, the flood represented chaos in its worst manifestations, monstrous, terrifying, powerful.

So it is not strange that in the New Testament, one of Jesus’ most memorable actions is to calm the storm, reassure the boatmen and instruct the waters, like a ferocious wild animal, to ‘be muzzled’ (Mark 4.35-41). It echoes the psalmist’s faith: ‘more majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!’ Or as another watery psalm says, ‘be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46.10).

But to those who are victims of the waters that are despoiling homes and farms and livelihoods at present, these words may not yet bring encouragement, still less hope. It will require a huge act of faith to hear them in any way other than as a cruel mockery. But we who are dry and warm in our own homes should try to pray imaginatively for the children, women and men who are on our hearts right now. We can stand alongside them and on their behalf, hold on to our belief that there is no chaos, however awful, where God is not already present, sharing in the pain of victims, knowing in his crucified self the waste and the loss and the pain. They need us to hold on to our belief that in God’s time and in God’s way, not least through the care of those who are bringing help and support, they will find hope once more, and be given back their lives. 

'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it' says the Song of Solomon. I am writing this on Sunday, the day of resurrection. May it come for us all - soon.

Floods and Photography: telling all the truth

We have seen some unforgettable images of water in recent weeks. Water lying still and serene across half of Somerset; water hurling itself against the railway line at Dawlish; water unleashed from sagging rain clouds collapsing under their own weight. There is a kind of beauty in these sights, and our best photographers have not been slow to capture it.

What we know, however, is that this terrible beauty often belongs to the bystander, the observer who is lucky enough to be able to view it from afar. Not necessarily physically afar: it’s possible that the photographers who captured those extraordinary waves rearing up to the sky were at risk themselves. But some of these images seem to come from an emotional distance where the camera is uninvolved and safe, positioned on higher ground, so to speak, where it won’t get wet. And we who admire them are at risk of looking at them in the same way, seduced by what seems wonderfully fascinating and strange.

The truth of course is more ugly. I am guessing, but when your home or land has been under several feet of water for weeks on end, when you cannot get in or out of your village, when your crops are destroyed and your animals have to be transported far away, when everything you have worked for is ruined, when raw sewage is floating through your house, when you are old or sick or alone or just very afraid, there is nothing beautiful about this watery world. It is dirty, polluting and cruel. The camera does not easily go into these forlorn despoiled places other than to document them and thereby objectifying them, a pornography of disaster. It sells newspapers and draws us like a magnet to our screens. But it may not always help us to capture the merciless way life has been wrenched out of its normality. It may not stimulate our imaginations so that we begin to view dire events with real empathy.

The best photographers understand this. They take risks by getting involved, and their legacy is war photography, disaster photography or street photography that moves us not just for its artistry and technique but also for its honesty. The trouble is, photography also risks beautifying what it sees. This is fine (or is it?) if your subject matter is an idyllic landscape or building radiant in the sunlight. You crop out anything that compromises the vision, clone-stamp blemishes, adjust the colour saturation, and create a paradise. Even the violence of nature is susceptible to this treatment. Those sunsets over the Somerset Levels look gorgeous. Of course, photography didn’t invent this beguiling way of seeing nature. Painters in both the classical and romantic traditions did it freely, and photography has been heavily influenced by it.

We thought water was our friend: life-giving, cleansing and refreshing. But we have seen the shadow side of water, its capacity to despoil and threaten with a relentlessness that is without mercy. It can be the quiet relentlessness of rivers slowly rising up to the bank top, of water creeping silently beneath floorboards and front doors and French windows. It can be the furious relentlessness of the whole gale from the south shattering puny defences and driving seas inland where they have no right to be. Like the Hebrew psalmist complaining that ‘the waters have come up even to my neck’, victims must feel helpless against its power. How is that to be conveyed in images that can make a difference to how we respond?

Perhaps still photography has to admit its limitations. The photographer is not usually the one who is dealing with a crisis, and this at once makes a difference to how it is seen and responded to. I recognise that the same is true of much of the commentary, like this blog. But when a voice speaks directly out of the waters themselves, it is vivid and authentic. Reading some of the tweets that have come out of south west England in recent days has touched me*. I don’t know how anyone has the time let alone the will to write even 140 characters. But these first-hand accounts of what it feels like to be flooded are compelling not simply because of events themselves, but their effect on the men, women and children caught up in them. These are our fellow-citizens who are suffering. We should be in solidarity, not bystanders but friends who weep with those who weep and do what we can to help.

We need to remember this when we are dazzled by a great photograph. It may not tell all of the truth.

* For example, @SouthWestFarm. Farming couple living and working on a farm surrounded by vast amounts of water in the heart of the Levels. Please support our ongoing battle to #dredgetherivers. Somerset.