I got the song Down in the River to Pray stuck in my head when I saw this picture, and I keep going back to look at it. It makes me think, and feel a little nostalgia. Going down to the river to get baptized is not something that happens any longer. We have fancy baptismals, often in specially lighted alcoves behind the church pulpit to get the job done flash, bang. No mud, no bugs, no heat, but also, there is no river. Does it matter? I’ll make a case for the river. Rivers have a long history involving spiritual practices, and I think there is more reason for that.
The Bible is full of references to rivers and salvation. The River Jordan in particular is associated with death and rebirth. It’s a specific river with a name, so it seems like that means something. Ancient cultures around the world made those same associations between water and spiritual birth, including the Plains Indians that were, for a time, lords of the American frontier. The Blackfeet tribe held that water beings with divine characteristics urged the tribe to protect the world of water. Blackfeet would not eat or kill water creatures, and treated water as a type of god. There is reason to believe that the tribes who once inhabited our area held the same or similar beliefs about water.
Herman Lehmann was the son of German immigrants to Texas. He was captured by Apache near Mason at the age of 10. He lived with both the Apache and Comanche tribes for nearly a decade. Lehmann later wrote a book called Nine Years Among the Indians chronicling his experiences. In the book, Lehmann told a story about a water taboo. He said, “When food became scarce we were sent down a little creek that had almost dried up, only stagnant pools remaining, and caught fish. I was so hungry that I wanted to eat the fish, but my companions told me that would offend the Great Spirit. I tried to argue the question, when the chief came up, and getting the meaning of my talk, he picked me up and tossed me over into the creek, probably with the invitation for me to help myself to the forbidden game.” The Comanches were also said to have avoided eating fish and other water dwelling creatures.
So there’s precedent for honoring water as a spiritual force. For myself, I love to sit by the creek and listen to the water. Out of the chaos of water, the Spirit drew forth life. It was here at the beginning. Listen to the water. Its gurgles and trickles, its soft, sucking noises, the delicate tinkle when it falls over rocks. The mystics say that water remembers the birth of all the ages. It holds secrets. Water is integral to all life, the starting point from which every born thing emerges. The water keeps a record of the creation. In its movements, its sounds and its nature lie the elemental truths of existence. Moving water speaks to the soul.
John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, and even today many make pilgrimages to that river because of its spiritual significance. Some may say it’s superstition, but I think there is something special about flowing water that most religions seem to have incorporated into different types of ceremonies. I love this photograph because it has a timelessness about it, and a sense of shared experience that we often don’t have since people got hold of the idea that faster and easier is always better. Traditions don’t come from nothing, they come from uncountable years of collective understanding that shouldn’t be thrown away without thought. It could be that the same type of image, at the very same place, might well have been caught 1,000 years ago when, perhaps, another group went down in that river to pray.
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns and articles appear periodically on BrownwoodNews.com
