The Water of Life

Theologian Jane Williams explores our multifaceted relationship with water in its many forms and how it can simultaneously be both precious resource and inimical enemy, bringing both deep joy and terrible destruction.

Jane explains, "In the Genesis creation story, God starts by creating the formless, almost chaotic mass of the waters, from which life will spring. In it, life is potential - but so is death. It has to be restrained, held back by divine initiative, to make space for human life, and the threat of the return of the waters to inundate the land is ever-present."

Jane considers some of the paradoxes of water and illustrates her narrative with poetry from Emily Dickinson and Matthew Arnold, along with readings from CS Lewis and Jules Verne. She also uses music to capture the different aspects of water and how we experience it. Compositions from Wagner and Toshiro Mayuzumi add to her thinking, with John Ireland's setting of John Masefield's poem Sea Fever.

For Christians, water is significant in the ritual of baptism which itself symbolises death and resurrection, the heart of the Christian faith. Jane concludes, "I suppose this exploration of the water that is both creation and destruction, chaos and peace, turns out to be a plea for hope. Not a naïve optimism that everything is all right really, but a kind of reckless trust that says, since we cannot control life and death, beginnings and endings, any more than we can in the end control the seas' tides, let us choose an adventure of trust rather than a life of fear."

Presenter: Jane Williams
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.