Reading Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ I’ve come to the famous lines:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The sea’s calm. There’s no wind. The ship is motionless. The mariner is helpless, without fresh water, surrounded by undrinkable salt water.
Malcolm Guite, in his commentary, writes of the figurative meaning of the words – first relating them to Coleridge’s addiction to opiates, then to modern consumerism; we’re surrounded by material possessions that fail to bring satisfaction or contentment.
Yesterday morning at church, we were thinking of those without fresh water or hygienic toilets. A verse from Deuteronomy 23 was read that I’ve never heard in church before: ‘Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.’
We considered WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) projects that provide communities with clean drinking water, decent toilets, and good hygiene. Statistics were read of the thousands of children that die… We were reminded – Water, water isn’t everywhere.
When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, there was talk of thirst and drinking water from the well. The woman’s five husbands and current partner were part of the conversation…
Jesus then talks about ‘living water’. Somehow the literal and metaphorical… the Mariners undrinkable seawater, Coleridge’s addictions, our unsatisfying possessions, third-world toilets, the Samaritan woman’s marital history, and me in Lowestoft this morning come together.
Jesus says, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’
And that’s water, water, everywhere.
