Meeting ID: 815 0755 1772
Prayer: All praise be Yours, Holy One, through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure. Amen.
St. Francis of Assisi
The Element of Water
We are water-beings. Our evolution, as that of all life, can be traced to our watery beginnings. Even today our bodies are, by percentage, more than half water. And the earth on which we live is more than three-quarters water. So when we say that "water is life" we are not exaggerating. Perhaps it is due to water's essential nature that it is seen as primordial. In so many of the world's creation myths water is present even before creation itself. In the Native American story of the Sky People, when Sky Woman falls to earth it is to a watery world she comes, and then the mud that forms the earth is brought from beneath that water. Water is also primordial in our own Genesis story. God creates earth by separating the water. But the water was already there. In that sense water, like Sophia Wisdom, existed before creation and was present with God at creation.
Water is the element that holds everything else together. It is our common bond. It is our blood, just as it is the sap running in trees, the tide rising and falling in oceans, the streams rippling over the stones that were also shaped by water. Water is life. We cannot live long without it.
Reading: From Loren Eiseley, "The Immense Journey: The Flow of a River"
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.... Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and movings that stir inanimate things. Like the charmed fairy circle into which a man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that a whole century had passed in a single night, one can never quite define this secret; but it has something to do, I am sure, with common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.
Prayer of Thanksgiving for Water
Holy One, we thank you for Sister Water.
We witness Water’s power to shape earth’s canyons and coastlines. Water surrounds us with warmth and safety in our mother’s womb.
We thank you.
Water blesses the earth with rain and sustains our life. She cleanses and refreshes us, washing over us in gentle streams.
We thank you.
Water awes us with her beauty
As waves crash against rocks or gently roll onto the shore,
As she cascades down a waterfall
Or blankets a mountain with a soft white cloak,
As she reflects the beauty of the sky and trees in her clear lakes
Or shrouds a valley in an early morning mist.
Holy One, we thank you for Sister Water.
Blessing of Water
Spirit of Living Water,
you hold all of creation in your womb
and spring us forward onto the earth at birth.
Spirit of the Tides,
remind us of the rise and fall of your rhythms
so that we may discover them deep within our beings.
Spirit of Greenness,
bring moistness and vigor to our lives
so that we might savor the experience of your energy
moving through us out into the world.
Blessings of water be upon us.
May we be carried by the flow of the great river of life.
May we discover a hidden spring within, gushing forth,
May we be carried to the shores of the sacred and renewed. Amen.
(adapted from Water, Wind, Earth & Fire by Christine Valters Paintner)
Closing Song: Water is Life, Sara Thomsen
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