The line is a place,

The gray ground of campaign

Between, therefore apart,

Distinctly realm of indistinction

Wrapt in fog of war,

That blank cloak of antiquity.

Yet yawning space

Of battle’s silent pain

Becomes by blackness’ art

Thro’ daylit subtle sublimation

A fertile mound and store

Of regal green felicity.

It is one thing to ask why the earth is greenest where and when the heavens are grayest. It is another to ask why the grayness of the sky is absolutely necessary for the greenness below it — which it is. For the latter inquiry is not just concerned with the bare relation between potential and actual, between the indistinct and the distinct, the nebulous and the terrestrial, but rather with the indelible relation of dependency between them, specifically the puzzling unidirectionality of that dependency as, put simply, while there can certainly exist no plants without rain, rain has a logical precedence which precludes it from the reverse. Its existence is no more or less secured by the presence of life.

Water is present at the very beginning of the creation narrative of Genesis. It can be counted as the third article of creation, following the heavens and the earth, since “the earth was formless and void, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” In this scene, water is something of an expansion on the notion of “formless and void,” that is, the formless earth can be understood as correlating to the fluid and aimless passivity of the deep sea.

Of course, God breaks up the monotony of formlessness and introduces the structure necessary for ontic identity by uttering distinctions into the otherwise indistinct agglomeration of all undifferentiated matter. He separates light from darkness, waters above from those below, earth from sea, and so on until everything is good. Naming, distinguishing, and identifying are identical reflections of the essence of creation. As all existence derives from the first impulse of the Divine Mind toward another, manifest in the first decree inscripturated in Genesis 1:1, so then all subsequent beings subsisting within that first decree derive their individual participations in existence through their separation from the primordial waters of basic substantivity without substance, matter without form.

This being the case, how then is it that water remains so necessary to the finalized order of creation? The verdant grove of earth with its variegated vegetation and coterie of creatures of all kinds, sustained by a diversity premised on distinction, cannot thrive in orderly and vibrant bloom without the continued presence of the churning, dissolving chaos of water. Indeed, it is seemingly water’s power as an unstoppable solvent, its peculiar indistinctness as an utterly malleable chemical agent, that makes it an indispensable component of life. The distinctions of existence called forth from the waters are on some level sustained by the very arena of shapelessness which always abhors the lines cut through its raw nature.

In rain or fog, the distinction between heaven and earth becomes thin. As the clouds muster their force, the blue of the firmament and the white of its trappings are smeared into indistinct gray. Rain and fog both obscure the vision as the colors of the world run and bleed into the same engulfing pallor. Locally, microcosmically, the world dissolves in the storm. Creation returns to her mother’s womb, shrinking to the blessed bliss of pre-nascency, before either weeping or laughter, light or dark.

And herein lies the heart of this sacramental mystery: that the storm always, without fail, passes, and thus leaves the heavens more blisteringly blue and the earth more violently, insistently green than before. At the moment of its greatest triumph, the gray tide inexplicably retreats, leaving its nemesis invigorated and more itself than it was before. As persistently as the waters above and below join hands in conspiracy to erase distinction, so does their accord give way time and again to a a firmer resolution of distinction.

The world of order, the handiwork of the Logos, thrives on the principle of opposition because it is a facet of distinction. The conflict itself generates and renews difference, and so the waters cannot but sustain the earth. While the fervor of animosity is native to both camps, the battle itself decidedly belongs to just one. The carrion and carnage become the feast of scavengers. Decay and rot, through victoriously dissolving borders and boundaries, create in themselves the fertility of new growth.

The rainstorm is a type of baptism. In the stifling tyranny of homogeneity hides the invigorating, activating principle, the seed which can call forth the latent potential for variegation buried in the otherwise desolate dirt. On the other hand, rain and all water is itself the rawness of potential self-realizing its diverse actual forms in the prosperity of flora and, to a lesser extent, the fauna which depend upon it.

And as baptism’s efficacy is anchored in the reality of Incarnation and Resurrection, so is this curious course of all nature, all life. Because Jesus harrowed Hell, overturned the very capital stronghold of the Enemy, crushing him at his apex, snatching the glory of death’s ultimate victory for Himself, therefore the rain is bound by chains of celestial steel and compelled by Divine mandate to always fail on the cusp of total annihilation of its foe, relinquishing the hunt at the moment of the kill and leaving its prey stronger every time. Jesus makes death a slave to life, chaos a servant of order, instituting once for all an order in which chaos is included and therefore essentially subdued. He makes Himself indisputably King of not only Heaven and Earth, but of the waters as well.

So in baptism, the dissolving principle of water, as thus sanctified and subdued, is applied to the human person in body and soul. His name, identity, distinctness are disintegrated and reabsorbed into primordial gray, the creature of dust and breath subsumed into water, eroded and suffocated. He returns to the womb and is born again by Divine pronouncement, the Spirit of God separating him anew from the dissolute world.

But baptism is also initiatory of a pattern. No land requires rain only once. Sanctification, as concomitant with eternal life, follows the same pattern of temporal life as perfected. The Spirit grants a continuum of identity as the triune Name holds the human person together through a cyclical reenactment of the typal life of the new Adam. He picks up his cross daily, dying and rising, emptying and being filled, falling and being forgiven. And as with rain this tension itself favors the rising, the being filled, the being forgiven.

This by no means renders the death itself an illusion, as it is defeated by its actual integration into life, so that one should not imagine that the storms of an individual life can be weathered by a trite sense of silver linings and rainbows to come. Indeed, the rain often leaves much real loss and destruction in its wake. But, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,” since it is really in the slaughter that He embeds salvation.

All the more glorious is the life that sprouts from loss for the reality of what it overcomes. “The last enemy to be defeated” is not some mock foe, a dummy to be knocked down in a pageant of battle, lest the victory be thereby made a mere show. Though the rains may truly topple a tree, let its fall at least be such that new things grow from its shattered trunk. Do we not imagine Our Lord capable of this, though He displays it in nature everyday?

In all this it is plain that supernature is not a contravention but a fulfillment of nature. The miraculous does not undermine the ordinary, nor the gospel abolish the law of the world. On the contrary, through the action of the supernatural, the divine attributes inscribed in creation are clarified. God does not intervene in nature to make these things true. That would imply that the ordinary course of things is defined by His uninvolvement. No, Christ incarnate reveals, manifests, institutes and upholds the permeation of all reality with the tangible fact of Divine Love. Every moment of time and every speck of air spirals out in echo of His enacted power and life. The universe is only a ripple in the waters below of Jesus’ life, death, and life on high.

In that sense, the very purpose of creation is to be a habitation for God in every fiber of its being. The same Word of the beginning, unchanged since before His utterance, is that which tabernacled in our midst. And so the beginning of time finds its source as much in the womb of a Virgin as in the formless void, for though the one came first in order of events, the other came first in order of meaning. That is, creation is realized in the Incarnation. So the Spirit of God hovers again over the waters, so “you must be born again of water and the Spirit,” so all is as it is — so all is called very good. The Incarnation is what creation means.

It was not good for the first son of God to be alone, so as he slept, from his side God made a bride. It was not good for the true Son of God to be alone, so as He slept, from His side God drew a bride, a body, of water. “God is love.” All existence, even and especially the gray, is His living testament. Therefore, He draws all things into Himself in Christ (Colossians 1:20), so that Christ is truest of nature and supernature, of earth and heaven, of life in general and a life in particular. The rain is sanctified. The gray patches of life, when things are enveloped in mist of doubt, when clear lines are permeated and erased, are as necessary to life as rain is to the field or as the grave is resurrection. This mystery is profound, yet it stands that the only way to find life is to die, the only gain is loss, the only source of green pastures is gray skies, the tree of life is the instrument of execution — and this truth is not a formula for optimism or optimizing, but rather a tension whose energy propels upward the soul caught in its balance.

How curious it is that the furthest extreme of that tension is also the nearest intimacy of its parts. The gray dawn and the vibrant sunrise, the blanched twilight and the blazing sunset co-inhabit one and the same instant. The moment of most smothering ambiguity is forever wed to the explosion of sharpest difference.

For he draws up the drops of water, he distils his mist in rain which the skies pour down, and drop upon man abundantly. Can any one understand the spreading of the clouds, the thunderings of his pavilion? — Job 36:27-29 (RSV)

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? — Romans 6:3 (RSV)

Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. — James 1:2-4 (RSV)