The Philosophy of Water

ANJOLI: I have a very conflicted relationship with religion.

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I grew up in a loving Puerto Rican household in Delaware County // raised Roman Catholic. Our weekend rituals would be clean the house on Saturday mornings with that loud salsa music and then go to church on Sundays.

I was going into third grade. And we had just moved from one small Delco town to the next // And we were of the age to start Sunday school. And so my parents found the church Holy Spirit.

It was a smaller suburban church from the outside, nothing too miraculous. And then when you walked inside the wooden pews were always glistening and the stained glass sparkled and the altar was always clean and ornate. orderly

SPIRITUAL MUSIC OUT AROUND HERE

But we were the first minorities to land in our block in Sharon Hill // and there were a couple of families that, Let us know we were welcome. They let their kids play with us. And then there were other families that wouldn’t even engage or speak

But even though our neighborhood didn’t welcome us entirely, there was a special priest at that church, and he went out of his way to welcome my family. Father Jack.

Goofy, goofy glasses and disheveled hair and he was so tender and sweet and kind // Father Jack really made us feel at home at Holy Spirit would always smile at me on the way out. // And he really helped us feel like we belonged in a space where we didn’t look like anybody else.

He would come to our house. He would, he baptized our chihuahuas. // It was amazing. I’d never heard of anything like this. And we had two short haired, very sassy Chihuahuas, Spike and Victoria, and we took them to the event. It was called the Blessing of the Animals.

And he came over and he said some sacred words and prayer. And then he did the little throwing of holy water that priests do. Spike and Victoria were barking like sassy chihuahuas and all of the animals.

But hat moment made it feel like I could start seeing myself at home in this Holy Spirit community guided by Father Jack // I became religious. I looked forward to Sundays, sitting in the pew, and singing in communal praise.

But then after a few years, Father Jack left. And another priest came in. He didn’t smile and his presence was extremely rigid. Just had a completely different energy.

With Father Jack, I could show up as my true self, joyful and loud and happy. But with this new priest, I felt like I had to be contained and I had to be somebody else.

As a child, I didn’t have the language to understand that the tension and the toxic environment introduced by this new priest might’ve been an aspect of racism., but I just knew that I could no longer go. // and so After some time, my family stopped going to church

But I kept looking for a higher meaning in my life.

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JAMIE: You’re listening to Philadelphia Revealed

I’m your host, Jamie J, executive director of First Person Arts, a nonprofit organization that believes everyone has a story to tell.

Across 10 episodes you’re going to get a tour of the Atwater Kent collection, sometimes called Philadelphia’s attic.

It’s a collection that’s grown over the decades, acquiring Philly’s material culture from individuals, families, and institutions. Sometimes literally from the trash.

In every episode of this podcast, you’ll learn about an object in the Atwater Kent collection and hear a story inspired by it from a First Person Arts storyteller. We think every Philadelphian will be able to see themselves in this collection, and that learning about Philadelphia’s many histories can help us understand its present — and future.

This is Episode Two: THE PHILOSOPHY OF WATER

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With storyteller Anjoli Santiago… who hails from Delco but has long called Philadelphia home. Anjoli is a lifelong artist, dedicated to the evolutionary potential where education and creativity intersect.

And she was inspired by a print from the Atwater Kent collection, of a real church that floated on a barge in the Delaware River in the late 1800s…

ANJOLI: I gave up on looking for a higher meaning or a spiritual home until recently in 2023. // That summer, It was not a pretty time in my life. In 2022, I had a very aggressive sexual assault that happened in my own home.

And that forced me to choose to make a different approach to life. I started going to therapy full time, and I addressed a lot of the habits that I had leaned on for years. And one of them was developing a new relationship with alcohol that I’m very proud of.

More interesting, actually, is that I’ve been sexually sober since 2023 // I like that phrasing. It’s better than celibacy, but it really just means that I’ve been single. // I’m not on the apps. I’m not actively seeking a romantic partner. // I was just committed to working on myself.

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And I knew I needed some kind of spiritual grounding, but I wasn’t ready to go back to church or any institutionalized religion for guidance. But instead, I, I really started noticing the world around me

I started noticing water and the pattern of water. // And that’s when I started looking into the philosophy of water.

 Water was the idea that gave me grounding. //  The running flow of water. It moves with the bends, it doesn’t resist. It’s so delicate and calming, but it carves the canyons.

 Water can code switch. It stays the same. But it shifts to the needs of the situation.

Water is a role model and I just started allowing it to, to influence me.

Because  I’m finding the ocean, and I’m carving the canyons, and I just don’t know it yet, because I feel like water doesn’t know its own power.

I’m just keeping my river inside of me going. 

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 The object from the collection that most spoke to me is a print, called The Floating Church of the Redeemer.

Now I look at this print and I’m like, this, this ain’t, this ain’t real. This is somebody’s imagination.

It’s a large color print depicting a Gothic style church built on top of a barge. //  This was the first time I saw a building on water. And so, I didn’t believe it. I really didn’t believe it //  Like this can’t be real, but it is.

JAMIE: The inscription on this beautiful print reads: Floating Church of the Redeemer, built by Clement L. Dennington of New York of the Churchman’s Missionary Association for the Seamen of the Port of Philadelphia, 1853

In it, the church is pictured in the middle of the river, with the Philadelphia skyline in the background. There’s a deck with a railing all the way around, and on it, strolling, there’s little illustrated men in suits and women with petticoats and parasols.

Anjoli had a lot of questions.

ANJOLI: Was it successful? And who was it for? And why was it made? And what was the value add of a religious space in water… when every other sacred space that I’ve ever known architecturally has been built on land?

JAMIE: So we talked to someone who knows a lot about it.

CRAIG BRUNS: My name is Craig Bruns. I am the Chief Curator here at the Independence Seaport Museum. // Our mission here at the museum is to document the regional history of the river and how that history takes us to the world.

Craig learned about the Floating Church of the Redeemer early in his time at the museum because it’s so striking, and unique

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CRAIG BRUNS: it’s pretty much like an archetypal church. It’s Got a pointed roof, right? And then it’s got a steeple at one end.

ANJOLI: Stained glass windows. // It looks just like a church that you would see in the street of an urban city

CRAIG BRUNS: it was an Episcopalian church. // It was carpenter Gothic. So it was very plain. It had little Gothic windows and such.

It just looks, It’s very ethereal. But then it’s on top of a barge and it’s on the water. And then you realize this is the Delaware River and, and the Delaware River that I know… I would never put a building.

CRAIG BRUNS: You can imagine, the water moving and the steeple kind of going back and forth

They even made seating for 600 people // And they had a pipe organ, the audacity, a fine pipe organ.

CRAIG BRUNS: It’s such a striking image to see this kind of archetypal church on a little floating… You know, it just seems like, almost like a joke

It was the magic of it. And the contradiction of it that got me curious. // To see a sacred space that used to bring me harmony, built on top of what is giving me that grounding now… It blew my mind.

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Only 3 or 4 floating churches have ever been built in the US

CRAIG BRUNS: The first floating church was on the East River in New York City, but it was called the Floating Church of Our Savior. // And it was designed by Clement l Dennington, and that was in 1844.

And, churchgoers, religious people in Philadelphia. Really admired how much it drew sailors and their families. And they thought, what a great idea. So, they got Mr. Dennington to do the same for Philadelphia.

In 1848, an organization called the Churchmen’s Missionary Association commissioned Dennington to build the Floating Church of the Redeemer. It was constructed in Bordentown, New Jersey, and floated down the Delaware River to Philadelphia. It would minister to a group of people often shut out of the churchgoing life.

CRAIG BRUNS: Sailors, you have to remember, had their own culture at sea. You know, they had tattoos, what’s that about? They walked in a funny gait, which they learned Uh, while aboard ships, so they wouldn’t fall over. // There were all sorts of spiritual things, pagan, I guess you would say, um, beliefs that were born from their observations of the, the weather. // So sailors were, whether true or not, they were known to be // not church going people, the ungodly. // And so, they were shied away from and not always welcome.

Sailors came to shore only rarely, and when they did, they had a reputation for burning through cash and engaging in vice

CRAIG BRUNS: When they did come to port, They, um, were wildly excited because they could go further than the ship, the bounds of the ship itself, um, which were so restricted in the ocean. // They were free and so they did everything they could. You know, brothels, uh, gambling, etc. // They got paid when they got to shore. And it was a big lump for some. // And boy, that was just burning in their pockets, right? And there was a whole industry, a shore, and their job was to fleece these poor men from their money

Missionaries and preachers saw an opportunity to offer these men an alternative — good food, new clothing, help mailing their letters, free or inexpensive places to stay, and of course — spiritual guidance

CRAIG BRUNS: The preachers used language and terms that the sailors would, uh, respond to. And so, they’re using the image of a ship at sea in a storm, you know, the illusion of an individual at sea in a storm. // If you can imagine an anchor in your mind, it’s kind of a cross. And so that became the crucifix. So they tried to, to pull all those terms into their message so that // the sailors could relate to it.

Opening a church on a barge… one that could be docked amongst all the other boats in port, was another way to try and meet the sailors where they were

CRAIG BRUNS: In amongst all the sails // the masts of the ships, which is much like a forest in those times, so many… There would be a steeple, right? And it would have a flag calling them and a church bell.

In 1848 the church opened. It was anchored either at the Spruce Street or Dock Street port.

CRAIG BRUNS: And so how did it float? We had two 85 ton barges, so big long thin narrow vessels // And they put two of those next to each other and then put planks across and made a big wide area and that’s where the church was, was built upon.

Contemporary documents say that the church was popular with both sailors and their families, even though some people, especially the preachers and non-sailors, got a little seasick.

ANJOLI: If I were to imagine walking into this church, I feel like I wouldn’t be walking in a straight line. I feel like I would be swaying with the water.

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I see looking up to the high ceilings and getting a little dizzy

CRAIG: I imagine the bell ringing. Bing, bing, just from the, the waves, right? // I think the steeple, because it was so tall that. Any movement on the water, that thing’s going to go woof, woof, back and forth. And so, um, that would probably be pretty alarming to see.

And I feel like I would smell the Delaware, I feel like it’s, it’s a very pungent river, um, for the good and the bad of it. // I feel like the sunlight would really be unique in this space because there’s no other large buildings to block it.

One of the things that really got me in the gut that this sacred space was built in the right place, was what they talked about what happened on the day of its consecration. So a missionary said, “The church was now in the midst of a class of persons most notorious for their irreligious and ungodly behavior.”

When I heard that line, that this was an institution that was meeting those people on the margins… // not needing the perfect ones to attend…. You don’t need to be dressed up. You don’t need to be able to buy a Sunday garment to go find a sacred space…

It felt so Philly. It’s like if Gritty was the mascot, like that would have been Gritty in that church,

I feel like I wish I were a fly on the wall. I get sea sickness too, so I would have, I would have been one of the first ones off.

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For two years, the Floating Redeemer was a hit. But those barges that the church was built atop… they were likely “hulks” — old bits of boat that weren’t really seaworthy anymore. So

CRAIG BRUNS: By 1850 it sinks in its spot at the dock.

The church sinks right into the Delaware. It’s hauled out, repaired and then…

CRAIG BRUNS: In 1853, it sinks again. And so, they saw the writing on the wall, as it were, it’s like, this is not going to be, uh, we’re not going to be able to keep this up. So the church was closed.

Within five years of opening, the Church of the Redeemer is closed. It was hauled out of the water one more time, floated across the river to Camden, pushed ashore, and used to house the congregation of St. John’s church. And then…

CRAIG BRUNS: in around 1868 or 1870, And Christmas Day it burned to the ground. // [So] It’s been through a lot. // In a very short period of time.

The Floating Church of the Redeemer was no more.

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But its legacy does live on — the organization that commissioned Dennington to build the church became the Seamen’s Church Institute. They still minister to sailors today, not only in Philadelphia but all over the world. In fact, a few years ago, the BELL from the floating church popped up on Ebay and Craig Bruns helped the Seamen’s Institute acquire it.

And then of course, there’s that print — the one in the Atwater Kent collection. Besides the bell, it’s now one of the only remnants of the Redeemer still around, a memorial of sorts to a church so beautiful and strange it’s hard to believe it was real.

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CRAIG BRUNS: Let me read you this poem I found, this poem was written in a, in a little brochure after the, uh, I guess mourning the loss of the church itself. It was in a little publication called, The Seashell. And it was printed in Philadelphia in 1851.

It goes, farewell, farewell to the chapel, that floats beneath the stately city’s towers, the sailor’s refuge, his guide, his home. Its blessings were all ours

For there with wife and child, beloved brethren be, joined in prayer and felt indeed in our innermost hearts. It was good for us to be there.

Then later on it closes, Farewell then, dear chapel, Our God is still near, And will hear us whenever we call, Though far from the Mariner’s house of prayer, He will be to us all in all.

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ANJOLI: The poem, the poem is what got me. And it was specifically the lines “floats beneath the stately city’s towers, the sailors refuge, his guide, his home, its blessings were all ours.”

That was a calling to what I had found in my youth with Father Jack. // It just brought me back to when Sundays were a happy time and that sacred spaces truly can be welcoming and affirming for everyone.

So yeah, I mean, listening and learning about this floating church really reminded me of how, in 2023, I was seeking a refuge again, a spiritual guidance of sorts that had landed me into the philosophy of water and really grounded me into a new way of approaching life.

AMBI OF ANJOLI’S VIDEO COMES IN

Towards the end of 2023, I mean this, this was a really difficult year. So I wanted a way to welcome 2024 that felt grounded and healing. Kind of a restart, a real refresh. So, of course. I decided to sign up for a New Year’s Day polar plunge into the freezing cold Atlantic Ocean. You could call it a baptism of sorts.

I’d always looked at the polar plunge, like those crazies and those drunkards. And I never thought more of it than that. But after this year and all of the changes I had made in my life. Working on my relationship to alcohol, committing to therapy. I just, I wanted to go into 2024 in a way that matched this energy of big change. So I was like, I’m going to jump into the Jersey shore and what better place to do it than Atlantic city.

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I mean, people always trash Atlantic city, but I’ve been going there since I was a child. So to me, it is my. favorite Jersey Shore.

So on the morning of January 1st, I walked into Margaritaville. I signed a paper and got a shirt that says, I survived the polar plunge and a certificate where you could fill your name in. And then we all gathered right here. Right in front of the Margaritaville

It’s winter, of course. So everything is closed up, but there’s hundreds of eccentric people gathering on the beach and I get enveloped in the crowd. I mean, this is a really diverse crowd, families of every age, every race, people who had that frat boy energy, people in ridiculous costumes, people in shorts, even though it’s freezing cold.

In some ways, it made me feel like I was in a congregation again.

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And the thing I’m most proud of is that I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t hung over. I was completely sober in this experience, knowing exactly what I was going to do. My whole family had come out to watch me jump into the water. I mean, none of them were willing to do it with me.

And before I ran into the waves, I took a moment to pray with them and we formed a circle. We weren’t touching hands, but we were close, and I called to my ancestors, and I acknowledged that they had been giving me the strength to continue when I’m suffering but I also asked for them to release, release me from their suffering and instead just let me carry their joy. It was magical because even though there were hundreds of people around us, it felt quiet, collective, and sacred. And my family had their heads lowered. They embraced me in this moment of transformation. I felt their love, their affirmation, and I felt ready. To jump into the water

AMBI IN THE CLEAR

At 12pm on January 1st, 2024, this guy gets on the bullhorn and he starts the countdown. 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes, and at five minutes, . And when the whistle blew, I took a pause and I was like, I don’t have to do this.

Nobody in my family would judge me. I could have just stayed safely on the sand and it would have been okay. But I think it was the prayer moment, really, that gave me the courage, the calling to my ancestors and my really deep craving.

For a new baptism, to rejoin spiritual guidance and seeking higher meaning for this new period in my life. That gave me the courage. So even when I see all the people splashing into the waves and yelping about the cold, freezing cold waters, I hike up my skirt and I ran right into that water too.

TAPE FROM ANJOLI’S VIDEO, PEOPLE SHRIEKING

Oh God, that cold made me gasp. I was wet and freezing. I lost the feeling below my knees, honestly, and I thought I was going to fall a couple of times. And then suddenly this big wave hit. A big wave was coming my way, I did not want to get soaked, but there I was, soaked and cold and happy, and I ran back out onto the shore, right into my mother’s arms.

FRIEND: How do you feel?
ANJOLI: I am the water, the water is me! 2024!

I knew I had found kindred spirits in that crowd of strangers. The blast of arctic chilled waters. I mean, it felt like I was finally in control of saving myself. I didn’t need institutionalized religion, sacred writings written by ancient men, or disinfected pews with weathered songbooks for guided singing to save me, or affirm that I am worthy

FRIEND: 2024 baby!!
ANJOLI: [Howls]