The mud

*

What was the mud? The mud was penance. The mud was made of penance, soul-building pain.

Her body was softer than a worm's, more vulnerable. She fell through this putty-like water and felt it reshape her. That was yieldedness. It was terrifying. An ana-baptism!

The process: you yielded to God (a yielding like death), you felt God knead you, and you then resurfaced into the world but it was now a different world. The world you left was a godless one, the world you re-entered was God's world. Here you were in no way alone.

And the filth made no difference.

And it didn't matter now how frail and damageable your own being was. You no longer brooded on that. God was in control.

And in that thought you submerged and were kneaded once again.

*