Peter’s April 2026 Blog

Forgotten Streams

There’s a particular moment on my walk through London to the offices of The Mission to Seafarers that has become, over time, a gently persistent metaphor. It happens as I pass a disused public water fountain on Great Eastern Street—a relic, its stonework weathered, its spouts long dry. This is no grand monument. Its presence is modest, almost apologetic, tucked into the relentless churn of city life. Yet, every time I pass it, I am reminded that London, for all its stone, glass, and steel, is a city built upon watercourses. Beneath its streets, hidden from view, ripple the ghosts of rivers and streams—Fleet, Walbrook, Tyburn—names that survive, but their meanings washed clean by time and progress.

London’s waterways once shaped its landscape and life. Streams cut their paths through green fields, villages clustered around their banks, and the city grew with them. But the relentless scale of urban development buried these living arteries; they have been channelled, diverted, and ultimately confined to the darkness beneath our feet. Today, what water remains above ground—apart from the mighty Thames—is almost always contained, pumped into ornamental lakes, or else forgotten entirely. The wild rivers, with their unpredictable energy, have been erased from the city’s visible consciousness. They linger in the language, in the place names, but the living flow that once animated London is now only a memory, a suggestion on an old map, a story to be told.

Passing that disused fountain, I am struck by how this physical erasure—this transformation of wild rivers into hidden channels—echoes something deeper about our human experience. Just as the city’s streams have been covered over, so too, in the modern world, do the deep currents of culture become invisible beneath the surface. We live in a world where the pursuit of sameness—of standardisation, of uniformity in design and practice—can create the illusion that cultural differences no longer matter, or that they’ve been assimilated into a single, global norm.

The world of global shipping, drawing on the obvious energies of many people and nations as it does, is still not immune from this. Standardisation has revolutionised the industry: it has slashed costs, improved safety, and offered a framework for accountability. It has created the impression that, at least in principle, everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. But beneath this surface order, the streams of differing cultures still flow, and every so often their impact is unmistakable.

Several years ago, in South London, excessive rainfall forced an old river—long diverted into an underground channel—back above ground. It burst forth, flooding the local cricket pitch, and in that moment, everyone remembered what had been conveniently forgotten: the river was still there, alive and potent, its energy undiminished by years of invisibility.

This phenomenon is not just geological; it is profoundly human. The work of chaplaincy and welfare among the world’s seafarers is, at its heart, cross-cultural. Those who work or volunteer with The Mission to Seafarers know this intimately. Every interaction is cross-cultural, an act of translation—not just of language, but of culture, of tradition, of ways of being. Good chaplaincy and welfare are not simply about communication; they are about awareness, about the conscious remembering that every person comes from somewhere, and that somewhere shapes who they are in ways that may be hidden but are never absent.

Yet, cultural awareness is not just about noticing the difference in others. It is also, perhaps more importantly, about recognising the deep patterns and predispositions of our own culture. Those of us who grew up in cultures of relative dominance can easily fall into the trap of thinking that our own norms are the baseline, the “natural” way of things. We presume, without malice, that what feels obvious or self-evident to us will, or at least should, finally also feel obvious to everyone else. In practice, this means that the streams of our own culture are so familiar, so omnipresent, that they become invisible to our eyes—like the air we breathe, only noticed when something goes wrong.

Cross-cultural work, then, is not simply a matter of seeking to understand others. It is also the work of becoming aware of our own mysteries, our own hidden rivers. For it is only through encountering others—through the mismatches and cross-currents and occasional difficult misunderstandings—that we are forced to see ourselves as others see us. These moments, far from being obstacles only, are also gifts. They are reminders that what seems strange or confusing to us may simply be the deep flow of another person’s history, experience, and tradition.

It is tempting, in moments of tension or disagreement, to presume that the other person is being deliberately difficult. This is true in interpersonal relationships, and it is true in the larger spheres of organisations, businesses, and nations. But such a presumption blinds us to the possibility that there are reasons—sometimes important, sometimes ancient—for the ways in which people act, speak, and believe. The world is watching, in dismay, the events in the Gulf of Arabia, and the impact is being felt everywhere—most acutely by those who are already vulnerable, including seafarers and their families. In the heat of crisis, it is easy for many to see only wilful obstruction; it is much harder, but much more necessary, to ask what lies beneath, what long histories and lived experiences are shaping the choices of others.

After the last great world war, the international community tried to forge in the world order spaces for dialogue, for understanding, for the patient work of negotiating difference rather than the swift violence of eliminating it. However partial they have been in their success, successes there have truly been. These spaces were built on the recognition that differences, however deeply buried, could not simply be erased by force. Like London’s hidden rivers, they remain, running unseen but powerful beneath the surface of our world. Whether we recognise them or not, they shape us. And sooner or later, they will make their presence felt.

Today, as seafarers wait north of the Strait of Hormuz, apparently becalmed, the reality around them is anything but placid. The cultural seascape is boiling. The visible order—the standardised practices, the shared designs—is only part of the story. Beneath it, the wild energy of culture continues to flow, shaping lives and choices in ways that cannot be contained.

So, as I pass the disused fountain on Great Eastern Street, I am reminded that what is buried is not lost. Our task, as citizens of a global city and a global world, is to remain alert to the hidden streams—of water, of culture, of history—that run beneath us. To listen for them, to respect their power and, every so often, to let them rise to the surface. For it is only then that we will truly see ourselves, and each other, in all our complexity and possibility.