No one in his right mind takes floods lightly. Floods can lead to great misery, to loss of life and property. One is grateful for the efforts of emergency services and volunteers to rescue people and to cope with the damage. One prays that those whose property has been damaged in this year’s spring flooding in Belarus will be able to recover swiftly.
However, should one not look at annual spring flooding in a larger sense, as part of God’s bounty? And, as the mighty Mississippi River has taught, one should not expect that it is possible to defy natural cycles with impunity. No matter how high the Army Corps of Engineers has built the levees along the Mississippi, there will be years in which the rising waters inexorably seek their natural flood plain. It is thus unwise to build in the flood plain.
Likewise Polesia’s Pripet Marshes and the Pripet River which feeds them are a glorious expression of God’s bounty. These marshes are a precious bio-system and an irreplaceable lung of Europe. The river’s annual spring flood is essential to the survival of these marshes — to the survival of the small part of these marshes left intact after decades of desiccating depredations, so-called “amelioration”, practiced by Soviet and post-Soviet authorities. See also the photos of the day for April 10, 2012; May 28, 2011; April 16, 2010; March 21, 2010; and December 19, 2009.
Flooding in Polesia can be serious. The flood of 1979 led to widespread misery and loss of property. Yet no matter how many new dykes the authorities build — and the new dykes in the area around Vjeras’nitsa at the southwestern edge of the Homjel’ (Gomel’) Region on the boarder with Bjeras’tsje (Brest) Region are a prime example — these dykes scar the landscape and deprive fields of essential nutrients; the dykes do not solve the problem of continued building on land naturally subject to spring floods.
The Polesian lady being interviewed in this video clip
expresses with modesty and sound reason a profound understanding of what it takes to live and work harmoniously in the Pripet Marshes. Her understanding of the cycle of nature and of God’s bounty echoes what we say during the Prayers of the People in the Anglican Service of Eucharist:
Open, O Lord, the eyes of all people to behold thy gracious
hand in all thy works, that, rejoicing in thy whole creation,
they may honor thee with their substance, and be faithful
stewards of thy bounty.
Photos of the spring flood in the Central Pripet area in 2008:
Kharomsk/Харомск
Khotamjel’/Хотамель
Varonina/Вароніна
Vjeras’nitsa/Верасьніца
