Season of Creation: Living Water

Introductory comments: rivers

During a recent sabbatical I was in southern France to attend a retreat. I was there in August, and it was hotter than Queensland in February, some days were 42. We found relief in a cool river. The river in the middle of a local town, was clean and delicious. Many families were gathered in the shade of the trees enjoying the environment. 

I felt sad when I thought of the Richmond and the Wilson rivers near home and longed for these rivers to have the health, wholeness and vitality that I was enjoying in rivers in Southern France. Some have noted that the Richmond is one of the sickest in the country. I think of the words of Stan Grant in “Murriyang” where he says that a healthy river sings. The river in France sang – the river had its own melody. Would that our rivers sing, even if the song is a lament, for they seem completely silenced. 

Our region has experienced devasting floods. There has been much talk about climate change, buy back schemes, recovery and flood resilience. One conversation that I have heard very little about is our relationship with these rivers or the resilience or restoration of the rivers. It seems that we and the river live alongside each other as distant neighbours without giving energy to our connection, our relationship. For me part of the disconnection is the colonial and patriarchal names given to these rivers. My internet search yielded information on the settler history around these rivers, but I have yet to discover information about the river’s story in Bundjalung Dream Time, or what the Nyangbul and Widjabul/Wia-bal people of the Bundjalung Nation called these rivers.  

When I walk alongside the Wilson it is as if my gut is telling me that healing the river may be pivotal in living a Good Life with safety and flourishing for all in the Northern Rivers. Working towards a healthy river could create healthy communities. My hope, my dream, my prayer is that our rivers can sing again. Perhaps part of learning to hear the rivers again will be learning to listen more deeply to Bundjalung people, whose relationship with these waters reaches far beyond the short history carried in their colonial names. 

Season of Creation: living waters

For many years the global ecumenical church has celebrated a season of creation from 1 September to 4 October. The theme for 2026 is living water, inspired by Ezekiel 47: 9, 12. The prophet envisions a spring of living water welling up inside the temple, it deepens as it enters the Arabah and heals the sea. The trees flourish along its banks. The Living water is the lens through which the readings are interpreted in the hope, prayer and dream that the Wilson and the Richmond would themselves be living waters rushing transformed healing through the region.  

Reconciliation and Restoration in Matthew 18

Matthew 18 brings together sayings and teachings from different contexts, and the joins sometimes show. Yet running through the chapter is a persistent concern for right relationship: how we live with the vulnerable, how we seek those who are lost, how broken relationships might be restored, and how Christ is present when a community gathers to do that difficult work. (More notes at the end). 

Restoring our relationship with the rivers

If Matthew 18 is about right relationships, what could it mean if the relationship we wish to see restored is between me and the river, you and the river, us and the river, the land and the river. The rivers that run through our own region carries the history of how we have lived upon the land. Environmental catastrophe symbolised by the sick rivers is a crisis of relationships between people, between people and God, and between people and the creation in which people are embedded. How can people restore right relationship with the river, with each other? 

Martin Buber and right relationships 

Last week I spoke about Martin Buber and his teaching on relationships between people. Martin Buber encouraged people to transition from I-It relationships to I thou relationships. I-it relationships treated people like objects. In an I-It relationship, the other becomes something we use, manage, classify or control. In an I-Thou relationship, we encounter the other as a presence rather than an object. My interpretation of Buber is this: in I-Thou relationships we see each other with sacred eyes and are fully present to the divinity shimmering within each person. I-Thou relationships require being fully present, and authentic listening from the True Self with the ego bracketed.  

I wonder what could happen if this same teaching is applied to our relationship with the rivers. What if our relationship to the Richmond could move from being an I-it relationship where we see the river as a commodity, to an I-Thou relationship where we are fully present to the river, allowing it to be in relationship to us as individuals and a community.  

A Richmond River Catchment Coordinator has been appointed to develop a catchment wide improvement plan, maintain real time water quality monitoring in the lower Richmond, and oversee $500,000 of work to rehabilitate Tuckean Swamp. Great. I am asking for more.  

I want the river to sing again, even if its first songs are a lament. The dream and prayer is for an I-Thou relationship with the River; a deep authentic spiritual connection to the river that it might become living waters. We do not restore relationships alone. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” As we sit beside the river we listen, lament, learn its story, and ask what right relationship requires of us. I want the Richmond to sing again. I want the Wilsons to sing again. Before we can restore their song, we must learn how to listen.