"I am haunted by waters." The last sentence of the story written by Montana writer, Norman Maclean, whose title was the inspiration for this morning's sermon. That sentence ends and seals a story that is both lyric and raw; a western story about the male journey into adulthood, into lives lived as fishermen-artists amidst the wild beauty of Montana's mountains and rivers. That quote, "I am haunted by waters," shall be the theme of this sermon . . . along with the other centering thought in your order of service by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "Sons and daughters of the earth, steep your self in the sea of matter, bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life."

This sermon comes to you at the behest of a member of this church, Eric Bier. He purchased the right to have a topic of his choice preached from this pulpit in the church auction over a year ago, from Rev. Ken Collier. Rev. Collier was unable to reciprocate Eric's generous contribution to the church coffers for a number of reasons, and it looked, for a while, like Eric would just have to consider his "purchase" as a donation, plain and simple. But Eric is a persistent fellow, and to his credit, he approached me last fall asking whether I would be willing to deliver a sermon in Ken's stead; a sermon of Eric's choosing, of course. Never one to let a colleague down, I quickly agreed.

Frankly, I had reservations. Would it really be a subject that would stir my preacher's juices, that would strongly capture my curiosity? Would it be a subject that I could use to touch your hearts, niggle your intellects, stir your spirits? I needn't have worried. Eric is a man of great passion and sensitivity, and what he wanted me to write about was something that had captured his care, his concern and curiosity - something that, in a sense, had haunted him in multiple ways. It was creeks. The lively little nomads of water that run the mountain- and hillsides of our earth. The active aquatic nerves that work the seams of the planet's surface But specifically he wanted me to speak about the creeks lacing the peninsula; the creeks that interject their sparkling and liquid fingers through the very flesh of the suburban density which this church calls home.

To give me a sense of what the subject meant to him, he sent me a wonderful three page email. Because this sermon is for Eric, as well as for you, but also because the email bore language that is powerful in its own right, powerful in both its expression, and in the way it carries its ideas, I want to share from that post during my talk.

Eric's post was divided into several topic headings. Here are some opening paragraphs under the topic, "Creek Maps." They should convey how the discovery of creeks in the neighborhoods of Palo Alto ignited Eric's curiosity, his sense of adventure, and his passion for a just relationship with the earth. Eric writes:

In the early 90's I took a course as part of a multi-day ecological training with the Institute for Deep Ecology. This course was about making maps of ecological features near your own home. I took a map of Mountain View, made a black and white copy of it, and then colored in the natural features: parks, open space, wetlands, and creeks. I also colored in the Hetch-Hetchy Aqueduct while I was at it.

What a different sort of map that was! Instead of emphasizing the roads, freeways, shopping malls, and so on, I was looking at Mountain View as a habitat for living things. Then I began to notice things. The Hetch Hetchy aqueduct was only one-and-a-half blocks from my house. Why had I never noticed it before? Stevens Creek was only 3 blocks from my house. I hadn't noticed that either; I thought Stevens Creek was only in Cupertino. Did you know that highway 85 is also known as the "Stevens Creek Freeway?" I didn't. The freeway and the creek braid back and forth across each other all through Mountain View.

Naturally, I left my house and went on a treasure hunt. Sure enough, a block and a half away, on Whisman, I saw painted markings on the road labeled "SFWD, 72" and "SFWD, 90". Surely, that must mean San Francisco Water District and the measurements are the diameters of the pipes. I followed the map to other aqueduct locations and spotted the large white concrete circles that provide some kind of access to the aqueduct at intervals along its length.

I found Stevens Creek, too. It was a treasure. Admittedly, it had a few shopping carts in it and occasionally was lined with concrete, but the rest was wild and still is. The creek bed is sandy. Trees grow along the sides and [so do] loads of wild blackberries. After a rain, the creek roars. In the summer, it becomes slow and covers over with algae. Ducks swim there and occasional egrets. I started walking to Stevens Creek regularly.

Eric went on to find other creeks, including Adobe creek that flows right outside this hall. Creeks became a destination for him, his wife Lynn, and, later, also their daughter Jessalyn. The trips to the creek became family journeys steeped in the joy of sharing nature in all its unending changeability - and in the deep psychic melodies stirred by direct encounter with the power of the natural world beyond our selves.

Those trips shadow the continuous journeys of the waters themselves, all part of the larger world of watersheds that cover the hills and marshes of the peninsula. Speaking of watersheds, I can do no better than quote Eric, again.

As I understand the term, a watershed is all of the land that feeds water into a particular river (or creek). Just like counties, watersheds have boundaries. However, these are natural boundaries. All of the inhabitants of a watershed are related, at least, in that they all impact [and are impacted by] that same body of water. One usually thinks of the word "watershed" in the context of wilderness: forests, rocks, rivers, fish. However, even urban centers are part of some watershed. The rain falling on my roof, my back yard, my parking lot, all goes somewhere. The tiny stream that runs along the curb near my house came from somewhere.

In some parts of the world, the human residents of a watershed gather together to discuss issues of common interest.

And here we all have gathered this morning. Not to discuss so much as to enter into sacred space, in the interior of ourselves and in the connections with others who also enter here. I have included inserts in your Orders of Service that can carry your discussion about watersheds beyond this room, including infomation about how to contact this magazine, Bay Nature [show magazine!], a wonderful resource about the natural environment of the SF Bay. I've included these to help you if you choose to enter a journey similar to Eric and his family, to assist you if you choose to engage in the work to keep the Bay's imperiled watersheds accessible and healthy. That is important work, work that cannot be forsaken, work that will truly determine whether life on this peninsula is livable or not. Please read them over. Go to the web sites listed. Call the organizations whose work is so very critical.

But here, now, we are called to engage in another particular pathway of journey. Here now we plumb the depths where outer experience is ignited within the quiet inner chambers of our hearts and minds, surrounded by the great sound waters of music, held in the deep stream bed of this great hall, watched over by the power of the guardian Manzanita branch suspended before us as a persistent sign of the intricate branching of life in its steadfast search for light, and as as sign of the fulfillment of the deep patterns living beings follow on this planet. Here now we can respond to Teilhard de Chardin's call to all of us: "Sons and daughters of the earth, steep yourself in the sea of matter, bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life."

We need the earth. We need a deep and connected relationship with the earth, no matter how urban or urbane we are. And it starts, I think, with our bodies. It starts with our bodies because they come from the earth. It continues with our bodies because, largely, they are sustained by the fruits of the earth. It ends with our bodies, because they return to the earth. Our bodies, are in fact, a living metaphor for the earth with its forces and languages, such as creeks. Our bodies have their own language of geography, both physical and psychic. Eric engaged the issue in his post to me in a section he entitled, "Creek as Metaphor (and Mystery)." Listen.

[ Pour the Rain Stick ]

Thinking about creeks leads me in many directions. In the Bay Area, creeks are largely hidden. I have heard stories of some communities that have been "digging up" their creeks and making them visible again, but I don't think that is happening much around here. While hidden, each of them is powerful in a way. They run the entire distance from mountain to Bay and if we know what is [good] for us, we don't put any obstacles in their way. While they are tame and harmless in the summer, they can run wild and overflow their banks during a rainy winter. In that way they remind me of our emotions or our true selves -- often hidden but powerful. For myself, I felt that they were a secret that had been hidden from me at every opportunity -- how did they hide the creek as it crosses Middlefield? Central Expressway? El Camino Real? How have I missed it so many times?

We talk about the interconnected web of all being. Creeks are strands of that Web taking water from mountain to ocean, carrying fish from ocean to reservoir and back.

The life that we inventive humans live in our bodies, moved and haunted by our passions, brings us into constant interconnection with the natural world - for, in fact we are the natural world. The more we are conscious of that interconnection the richer our lives. But in our times, because the assault on the natural world is wide and devastating we are being increasingly called to choose to work to repair, to heal, and to sustain the earth and its creatures.

That work must become, for you see it is, one of the primary languages of our lives; that kind of work is an expression of some of our best understanding about how to live well. Our actions to heal and care for the natural environment, and to go out into it to enjoy its many gifts and challenges, is a language we use to stay in right relationship. If anything can be called spiritual, certainly those kinds of actions, that kind of language of living, can be.

For the motive of those actions all comes from deep wells. The deep wells within our bodies of our spirit/psyche/consciousness and its hungers. The deep wells that tap the deeper waters, waters that come from the very sources of our existence. The actions that we take to preserve the earth's integrity, and the actions we take to enjoy the earth's beauty have their source in something deep. Have their source, in fact, in Sources that speak to us in different language than we normally use. Language whose deep grammar is stirred when we are touched by the earth and its waters, by the sounds of its natural movement, by the feel of its living flesh, by the taste of its amazing fruits, by the smells, drawn into our bodies, that fill us with delight and memory.

Here let us turn to our primary sacred text for the day, Norman Maclean's story, A River Runs Through It. The narrator, his brother and father have been fishing all day on the Big Blackfoot river in Montana. His father, who is now an old man, has carried with him the book that he preached from throughout his life as a minister. The narrator speaks:

By now I could see inside the sunshine and had located my father. He was sitting high on the bank. He wore no hat. Inside the sunlight, his faded red hair was once again ablaze and again in glory. He was reading, although evidently only by sentences because he often looked away from the book. He did not close the book until some time after he saw me.

I scrambled up the bank and asked him, "How many did you get?" He said, "I got all I want." I said, "But how many did you get?" He said, I got four or five." I asked, "Are they any good?" He said, "They are beautiful."

He was about the only man I ever knew who used the word "beautiful" as a natural form of speech . . . .

"How many did you catch?" he asked. "I also caught all I want," I told him. He omitted asking me just how many that was, but he did ask me, "Are they any good?" "They are beautiful," I told him, and sat down beside him.

"What have you been reading?" I asked. "A book." he said. It was on the ground on the other side of him. So I would not have to bother to look over his knees to see it, he said, "A good book."

Then he told me, "In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that's right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water."

"That's because you are a preacher first then a fisherman." I told him. "No," my father said, "you are not listening carefully. The waters run over the words."

What I think Maclean is saying to us is that the world, its waters, and all its natural splendor, as well as all its gritty reality, speak to us in a language that we know well, if we listen carefully; a language that we can joyfully and deeply experience if we open ourselves widely, sincerely and intentionally. And the word it speaks is fundamental to our living well, to our living authentic human lives, to our being human . . . because the source of our human lives is the very same source as the waters that will forever haunt us.

[ Pour the rain stick.]

Ashé. Amien. Shalom. Blessed Be. Namasté.

What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Kurt Kuhwald