Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.

• Ecclesiastes 1:7

he brought streams out of a rocky crag
    and made water flow down like rivers.

• Psalm 78:16

The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the south side.
As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross. He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?”
Then he led me back to the bank of the river. When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

• Ezekiel 47:1-12

“ ‘The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.’ – Henri Bergson”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941) was a French philosopher.  He blended phenomenology and existentialism with analytical philosophy.

I am not pessimistic about how a river flows.  I wrote some time ago that in two instances the US Army Corps of Engineers tried to divert a river away from a fortification, and all their work failed.  Both were during the war of the 1860s in the USA.  (Apply your own name for it.)  In Virginia, they wanted a fort to be cut off from resupply.  They dug a trench to take a large turn in the river out.  Water likes going straight downhill instead of bending around.  They then took gunpowder to explode a hole in the higher ground, which should have caused the river to miss the Confederate fort.  The explosion sent the dirt flying, but the dirt landed in the trench that they had carefully dug by hand.  They were back to their starting point.

In the other instance, Vicksburg, MS was in the same kind of crooked riverbed.  They dug everything out and the water refused to take the easier route.  It stayed flowing toward Vicksburg.  This was an engineering failure, but the death toll in Vicksburg would have been less by the time the city fell, due to siege, and not cutting off river water to the city.

But a river diversion helped the Medo-Persians defeat Babylon.  They rerouted the river that went through the walled city of Babylon.  When the water level went below the wall, the army went through the culvert used to flow the water in and out of the city.  And that was how Babylon was defeated.

While the engineers at Vicksburg could not redirect the flow of the water, the Mississippi River changes direction often.  Many of the states in the area use the river as their border, the river might change from one year to the next, but the state borders are generally based on where the river once flowed, rather than the current riverbed.  In a similar situation, you can land at the airport in Omaha, NE and then drive toward Omaha; both the airport and Omaha are in Nebraska.  If you buy gas at the station near the airport, you will find that the gas station is in Iowa.  In this case, the Missouri river changed its course, and you switch states without ever crossing the river.  But you do cross where the riverbed once was.

To a philosopher, we have the phenomena of the water flow and the riverbed.  Water will generally go downhill.  As the river carves its way across the terrain, the water will want to go straight downhill.  But with an obstruction here or there, the water is diverted and we get all those curving paths that a river takes.  And sometimes when the river changes its course, it leaves a lake behind.  Reelfoot Lake in northern Tennessee was created by an earthquake along the New Madrid fault.  According to experts, we are far overdue for the next major earthquake along that fault line, from New Madrid, MO to Pittsburgh, PA.

The philosopher, especially the phenomenologists, treat the riverbed and the movement of water as two different phenomena, but when God makes the river, the initial movement of water creates the riverbed, and oddly rarely in a straight line.

So, let’s look at some attempts to divert a riverbed so that the change in the movement of the water will change.  Why do some of those attempts defy gravity and others work like a charm?

The water goes where God wills it to go.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.