How might you go about reclaiming the waters of your baptism? The first step may be to identify them in the first place: the source for the font, the watershed where you lived at the time. How often have you thought about those waters - along with the event of your baptism? When I pose these and similar questions to even the most faithful church members, folks will look at me with some astonishment. They had never thought about connecting baptism with real or natural - or, we could even say, wild - water! 

The obviousness of water too often has been hidden in our baptismal rites. The experience of modern living in North America is practically defined by how we miss the things that are directly in front of us - birds, trees, green shoots breaking through asphalt and concrete. How often do Christian preachers make reference to the actual ground that Jesus walked on, or the types of birds that would have nested in the shrubs and trees? There is much that we miss when our spiritual vision glosses over the matter of this Earth. 

And so, dear reader, I invite you into the work of retrieval - going back to the watery origin story of your faith and paying closer attention to some of the details hiding in plain sight. In my own writing and preaching I like to do the work of surfacing what lies beneath a gospel text, or making odd connections and juxtapositions that add contour what has become worn and familiar.