Water symbolizes God’s grace—God’s freely-given love and redemption. In Christianity, water is strongly associated with the sacrament of baptism, by which a person (whether an infant or an adult) is initiated into the church. The baptismal water symbolizes cleansing and forgiveness of sins by God’s grace. Wherever water comes up in Gilead, John, as a minister, is undoubtedly thinking about baptism on some level, even if he doesn’t explicitly name that association. Because the Iowa prairie is subject to drought, John’s delight in water also reflects his awareness that, like God’s grace, it’s a precious substance that appears as a surprising gift from above. So, sometimes, water appears in the novel as an example of the sudden joy to be found in nature (and, implicitly, God’s generosity in freely giving it). Once, John remembers watching a young couple walking through town together and the young man jumping up to grab a tree branch, which showered raindrops onto the laughing pair. He associates the shower with God’s blessing and wishes he’d paid attention to such moments more often, suggesting that the world is filled with such blessings, if one knows where to look. In another such example, while watching his son and his son’s friend Tobias hopping around in a sprinkler, he remarks that sane people should show such exuberance “when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”
Rainy days also figure prominently in John’s memories—times when God’s grace could be seen clearly. One of John’s most poignant childhood memories was watching his father and other adults cleaning out a burned-down church while singing hymns in a warm rain. He associates that memory with affliction, and with the idea that suffering can, by God’s grace, purify, transform, and even sweeten people’s lives by removing extraneous things—rather like the waters of baptism. Much later in John’s life, there’s the memorable rainy Sunday when Lila walked into John’s church for the first time, and he fell in love with her. In this instance, water symbolizes the new life John is about to begin—a completely unexpected gift that transforms his years of lonely suffering.
Water Quotes in Gilead
I believe that the old man did indeed have far too narrow an idea of what a vision might be. He may, so to speak, have been too dazzled by the great light of his experience to realize that an impressive sun shines on us all. Perhaps that is the one thing I wish to tell you. Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenever I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what it means to affirm the sacredness of the human creature. I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect. That’s the pulpit speaking, but it’s telling the truth.
My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature. I remember my father down on his heels in the rain, water dripping from his hat, feeding me biscuit from his scorched hand, with that old blackened wreck of a church behind him and steam rising where the rain fell on embers, the rain falling in gusts and the women singing “The Old Rugged Cross” while they saw to things, moving so gently, as if they were dancing to the hymn, almost. […] I mention it again because it seems to me much of my life was comprehended in that moment. Grief itself has often returned me to that morning, when I took communion from my father’s hand. I remember it as communion, and I believe that’s what it was.
I mention this because it seems to me transformations just that abrupt do occur in this life, and they occur unsought and unawaited, and they beggar your hopes and your deserving. This came to my mind as I was reflecting on the day I first saw your mother, that blessed, rainy Pentecost.
That morning something began that felt to me as if my soul were being teased out of my body, and that’s a fact. I have never told you how all that came about, how we came to be married. And I learned a great deal from the experience, believe me. It enlarged my understanding of hope, just to know that such a transformation can occur. And it has greatly sweetened my imagination of death, odd as that may sound.