Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 4 -- The Cross
The Frank, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a theologian of mystical
bent, compared the sea to Christ.
The sea is the source of fountains and rivers; the Lord Jesus Christ is
the source of every kind of virtue and knowledge.
In a sermon from his Cantica Canticorum, the subterranean water course
becomes an Ecclesiastic metaphor for spiritual operation.
If all waters seek incessantly to return to the sea, making their way thither sometimes by hidden
and subterranean channels, so that they may go forth from it again in continual and untiring
circuit, becoming visible once more to man and available for his service, why are not those
spiritual streams rendered back constantly and without reserve to their legitimate source, that
they may not cease to water the fields in our hearts? Let the rivers of diverse graces return
from whence they came, that they may flow forth anew.
Metaphor notwithstanding, Bernard bemoans his generation as dwarfs standing on the shoulders
of Greek giants, unable to see farther by individual brilliance, but through mastery of the classics.
Conclusion
As fewer and fewer Europeans thought about more than basic needs and religious ritual, ancient
texts were left to decompose. Instances can be uncovered of sequestered intellectualism -- we
tip our hat to Macrobius -- but critical thought in large part was increasingly stifled by dogma.
The imaginative richness associated with underground rivers had faded. No one was retelling the
tale of Charon, compiling novel encyclopedias, thinking about rainfall missing the earth, peering
into caverns. Ecclesiastes 1:7 posed no an intellectual invitation.
Physically out of sight, intellectually out of mind, thought about underground rivers approached
extinction.
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