Water in the Wilderness

A Baptismal Story from Jamie Bonilla

As I mentioned last week, we will spend the next six weeks telling stories. As we wait for the light to return, as we wait for Easter, for resurrection, for new life, we’ll answer together: How did you come to the waters? and Where has the Spirit taken you since that day? Guest writers and friends will join us each week and I hope you will too!

You may not resonate with everything you read, and that is okay, even the point. Storytelling is a window into another perspective, another way of viewing the world. Storytelling connects us to experiences we might otherwise never encounter. These stories will remind us that there are as many expressions of life with God as there are people.

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I was six years old when I first came to the waters. In my leotard and shorts, I climbed up the stairs and into the heated second-story baptismal, where I explained to the congregation that I had already been following Jesus for three years, so I knew it was time for this next step. I also told them about my favorite character in the Bible, David. It was all typed out for me to read, printed off on our dot matrix home printer (you know—the kind with the holes in the perforated edges of the paper? 1987 was awesome). Pastor Pitcher stood by, listening, smiling, then dunked me. Nothing felt different as I came out of those waters, but I had been obedient (essentially the goal of my little-girl life).

Most of my story lies between that paragraph and the next one, all full of doubts and fears and love and wandering in wilderness and being met and invited into new spaces. It has been (and still is) quite a journey, being with God in the truth of myself, however ugly (or beautiful!) that might be. Here is just one little glimpse:

Last year, I felt an invitation to the word “water” as a gift and invitation. I have often found myself stepping into a word as the year begins, taking time to listen and discern in the months leading up to this new start. But never before had it been a noun (in previous years, it had been adjectives and verbs, like “brave” or “free” or “trust”—what was I supposed to do with this “thing”??). I knew, even as I received that invitation, that there was part of it that would be facing my difficulty with water.

Something so ubiquitous that it makes up 70% of the earth (and 60% of my body itself!) became an invitation to attend to the fear and anger it engendered in me. My husband learned early on that I did not find it fun or playful to be splashed or thrown into a pool. On our honeymoon, I had a panic attack trying to snorkel. I have never been a good water drinker. That whole 8-10 glasses a day was for someone else, I was sure. Somehow, my entire life, I found ways to *avoid* water (though, of course, never completely! It is, in actual fact, everywhere!).

But as I leaned in, in response to this invitation, I encountered not only the difficult aspects (for me) of this life-sustaining element but also some delight along the way. The moment I announced that my word for the year was WATER, the Southern California skies broke open and it rained for days and days on end—enough to end the drought we had been in for years. I saw puddles and droplets everywhere I looked. I drank water each morning as part of my prayer of attentiveness and engaged Jesus through Ignatian-style imaginative prayer.

If you have never practiced Ignatian meditation/gospel contemplation, it is a way of entering more deeply and imaginatively into the events of Jesus’ life as recorded in the gospels. You take time to settle into a particular gospel scene with all of your imaginative “senses.” What are you seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling as you enter this scene? Where are you in relation to Jesus? Then you allow an interaction to unfold between the two of you as you continue. It can be a very meaningful (if at first foreign for most of us!) practice.

One of the sweetest moments of my entire year was when I was spending time with Jesus at his baptism. What unfolded in that scene was that when Jesus went under the waters in his own baptism, he came back up carrying me with him. I was a child, and he was pulling me up out of death and into life. I felt rescued, cared for, held, and freed.

Of course, Jesus’ next steps after his baptism take him into the wilderness for 40 days, and the season of Lent we have just begun mirrors that journey. But in my imagination of this moment, Jesus didn’t just walk into the desert by himself. He was still carrying me, wrapped against his chest—and he kept me there, tenderly, like a mother with a Moby-wrap, all through Lent. We journeyed together, with my ear against his heartbeat, offering nothing to the equation but myself, my presence with him.

A couple of years ago, I began to hear the call to “remember your baptism” (a phrase made famous by Martin Luther, who would tell himself this in the midst of deep doubt and temptation). And this past year of WATER has made me remember, again and again, not only my initial coming-to-the-waters but also the times since that I have been called God’s Beloved Child, right alongside Jesus in those waters.

For years, I had felt spiritually “thirsty,” and to have that met with abundant, life-giving water in so many ways… was a deep gift. I found my cup running over, physically and spiritually. And now, anytime I find myself saying with David (apparently he’s still one of my favorites!) in the Psalms, “My soul thirsts for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water,” I remember these moments, these revisitings of my baptismal belovedness. These places I have been met by God’s Spirit stirring my own inner waters, reminding me: You. Are. Deeply. Loved. Cared for. Nestled up against my chest.

And, as a spiritual director and retreat creator, it has made space for me to invite others toward their own experiences of water in the wilderness places. This Lent will be the second time I’m offering Water in the Wilderness: A Creative Lenten Journey —a space of naming our thirst and turning our attention back, again and again, to the Water, the fountain of Life in us, even as we walk through the dry wilderness places alongside Jesus in this season. There are still spaces (& still time! Our first Zoom meeting will be Thursday 2/22!) if you’d like to join us for this season—whether or not you consider yourself “creative” (you are welcome to engage the reflections and creative exercises as much or as little as you’d like)!

But wherever you find yourself this Lent, I hope you catch your own glimpses of “water” in the wilderness—whether that’s a recalling of your own baptismal story(ies), or new thirst-quenching discoveries along the journey. Peace to each of you in these wilderness spaces.

I will leave you with a “found poem” I made last year just as Lent began. May you find invitations in it for your own soul, as I have:

Jamie Bonilla is a spiritual director and generally creative person. She writes the daily content for Anam Cara Ministries and loves getting to lead the liturgy at her very small church. Jamie plays regularly with words and paint, and she sometimes calls herself an artist or a (found) poet. Creativity and spiritual life have gone hand-in-hand with her for many years. She is definitely an introvert. She lives with her husband and two teenish boys (and a cat and a dog) in Southern California. You can contact her at jamie@anamcara.com or sign up for her Lent course here: jamiebonilla.com/water-in-the-wilderness-lent-2024.