Midway through my daily walk, I realized that I’d forgotten the large glass of water that I drink before setting out each morning. As a result, I was feeling parched as I ambled along on this last-day-of-July morning of the hottest year on record. The bodily thirst corresponded to the frame of mind that had been occupying my thought throughout the walk: the longing for the refreshing Presence of Christ Within. As I was treading along in this state of both physical and spiritual thirst, the first two verses from Psalm 42 (KJV) came to mind:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
I feel personal connection to these words, not only because they create an image that illustrates my soul’s profound longing for God, but also because the deer (hart) has been the animal I’ve felt closest to and the one that has figured, now and then, significantly in my life. I suppose that if I were a Native American, the deer would be my totem animal!
So I was delighted when earlier this week, I read of a fourth-century mosaic that depicted deer quenching their thirst at a fountain placed at the base of the Cross. The essay in which this description occurred is titled “Why We Need the Creed,” written by Erik Varden, the bishop of Trondheim, Norway. The mosaic he described is located in the apse of a prominent church in Rome, St. John Lateran. Taken from his essay, Bishop Varden’s description follows:
The image of Christ found there is like a pictorial precis of the Nicene definitions. Surrounded by angels, Christ is depicted in heavenly realms as a haloed torso suspended between, underneath, a naked cross, the emblem of his work in time, and above, a seraphic composition that symbolises the Father’s eternal throne. The Spirit, in the form of a diving dove, connects Christ’s apparition in glory with the earthly sphere, causing rivulets of water to gush down along the cross’s stem to form at its base, a fountain from which deer quench their thirst and around which sheep pasture.
It is always gratifying to find imagery from past millennia that correlates with one’s inmost experience and discoveries, as both the psalm and the mosaic did in their depiction of the deer drinking the living water. The great lapse of time since the image and words were created did not diminish their relevance. For from age to age, time has no bearing on innate human nature with its universal, profound need, within which every particular person awaits the one, eternal resolution.
Images and words furnish each inward life just as one furnishes one’s home with domestic furniture and utensils. These externals can order and nurture our daily life: providing utility; comfort; beauty; and, most important, a sense of home. In like manner, the inward life is ordered and nurtured by words and images that allow us to feel at home, peaceful and content: known. Having thus furnished the inward habitation, we trust that when he appears, the Christ will find our soul to be a beautiful, hospitable, and familiar place of rest.
Detail of apse at St. John Lateran in Rome
Abiding Quaker 