A Flood and a Rainbow
- suc991
- Apr 27
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 28
This morning when I (Jennie) entered the church building at 8:30am, I thought my biggest challenge was going to be making sure that the KAIROS Earth Day video that Julia asked to be shared as part of our gathering was going to be clearly heard and seen on both the livestream and in person - a few different layers of sound and video and projector sources.
Little did I know the adventure that was to come. Entering the sanctuary, I saw a crumpled mess of tiles on and in front of the communion table, with water dripping steadily from the ceiling and an enormous puddle - inches deep at its worst - covering the floor at the front of the sanctuary.
My first instinct was to remove the (now soaked) bible from the communion table and get it to a dryer place. My next was to check if the water had reached the electronics. It hadn't - thanks to the uneven floor in the sanctuary that has been complained about more than once but which today was our saviour - but it was getting close. Another tile, overwhelmed by the weight of water within and upon it, crashed down as I tried to retrieve the rainbow candle in its glass votive, water dripping onto my shoulders as I waded into the puddle that went halfway up my shoes. The candle fell to the ground, but was cushioned just enough by the water already upon the floor that it didn't shatter.
Within the next 5 minutes, members of the book study that was to take place at 8:45am arrived, and, as one, they immediately got to work. As I went to phone Lloyd and let him know that the livestream would have to come from Visions and that we would need to cancel our Sunday Gathering, along with calling our caretakers Charles and Susan to apprise them of the situation, Eric headed upstairs to try and identify the source of the leak while Linda and Ed carefully separated out pages of the wet bible one by one and pressed paper towel in between to help it dry. Margaret phoned Julia so I could prioritize asking Charles to come down ASAP and try and contain the damage before it got too serious. Emails and social media posts about the cancelled gathering were sent.
As Eric traced the cause of the flood to the tank of one of our upstairs toilets, Lloyd - even as he was driving to Moncton to lead the gathering at Visions - was on the phone, calling Frank and Noah and others to come help. With the water shut off upstairs, the steady stream of drops began to abate, and the cleaning then began.
The atmosphere was a strange mix of urgency and worry mixed with an almost festive vibe. People continued to trickle in - no one leaving - and offered help or simply stayed to chat with each other about what was going on and get updates as they were available. As problems and things needing to be done appeared, those who were able did them, and those who were not were a welcome presence.
Catherine made coffee and tea - when in doubt, if it's something happening at church, no matter how good or bad, coffee and tea will help. Margaret put on Mambo No 5 and a combination mopping/dance party briefly broke out.
Work continued. Elsie and others used tea towels to dry the communion table, Christ Candle, and other smaller tables and items that had been wet. The remains of fallen tiles (as well as those still hanging by a thread in the ceiling) were collected and removed. Water was mopped, vacuumed, shoveled, blotted, swept, and soaked up in just about every way it could be. Janet called Alex Thomas and asked to borrow a number of fans to help dry the sanctuary further - he agreed and was here within half an hour, still early in the morning on his day of rest. Our old projector, soaked through with water, was taken from the ceiling and unplugged.
As the immediate panic receded and Julia arrived and moved among those who were there, shortly after 10am we decided we would go ahead and have a gathering anyway, since we were already here being God's people together in this space - albeit perhaps not quite in the way we would have expected.
A circle of chairs slowly coalesced at the back of the sanctuary. First, just a handful, but then it grew. And as I made the last of the phone calls needed to confirm the plumber was coming first thing on Monday morning, and as Charles left to head to Masstown to visit his daughter and granddaughter - a trip he delayed without hesitation when he received my anxious phone call over an hour earlier - we thought to begin our informal gathering around 10:15am.
But then there were Robert and Sandra, standing at the front door and reading the sign. And so we welcomed them in, and offered the tea and coffee that Catherine prepared, and the circle became a little bit wider. And over the next minutes as our usual 10:30am start time approached, more folks who hadn't seen our messages trickled in - about half a dozen, all in all - and the circle got a little bigger each time.
And at 10:30am, we began our gathering. As we began, I thought of that part of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas when the Grinch puzzles at the whole of Whoville celebrating and singing their joy of Christmas in a circle despite all that had been taken from them - "somehow or other, it came just the same."
It was a service full of joy, laughter, peace, and togetherness. So what if the lighter that we use for the Christ Candle was destroyed in the flood? Ed happened to have some matches! So what if the front of the sanctuary was bare? What a great dance space for Lita decked in her princess tiara! So what if we were surrounded by garbage bags full of soaked cloths and mismatched tupperware tubs covered in bits of wet tile, and the sound of a dehumidifier humming along as it pulled extra moisture from the air? It didn't matter, because God was still there - "somehow or other, it came just the same."
And as Julia led us in the Earth Day service that she crafted, and as we heard Catherine read the story of the great flood and God's covenant in the rainbow - the scheduled reading for this week, ironically - and as we heard Margaret share the story of her role in the creation of our opening hymn "O Beautiful Gaia", and in our singing of it face to face in our wide circle, through all of it, God was there.
Janet said when we were sharing our glimmers (I'll do my best to paraphrase): "When something like this happens, it makes you realize that these are all just things. It's the meaning that we give to them that's important." It doesn't matter that our sanctuary floor is a little uneven - in fact, that unevenness is what kept the water that was so deep near the communion table and cross from spreading to destroy our electronics. It doesn't matter that we didn't get to enjoy the colourful earth day display on the communion table that Dawn carefully crafted - it was not time wasted, because those fabrics soaked up just enough of the flood to keep it from getting to the piano.
God said: "I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth...I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth."
And these words are true today. A flood - this flood averted by imperfect floors and Earth Day displays and many, many hands working together - did not destroy everything. In fact, even if our entire building had been flooded, it still would not have destroyed everything, for it is not the things, but the meaning that we give them that matters.
And people somehow still would gather, and songs would still be sung, and someone would have a match to light a candle, and children would still dance in joy, and God would still be there.
Somehow or other, it came just the same.
Comments