Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Ingathering and Water Communion

 

Water is Precious – Rev. Darcey Laine

When I moved to California in 1993, the area was coming out of a 7 year drought. [1987-1992] A drought means there is not enough rain or snow for everyone to have as much water as they want. I was moving here from Baltimore, where it seemed to rain all the time, so my new neighbors knew something I didn’t: how precious water is.

The drought was hard on the fish and birds and plants that need to water to drink. The drought was hard for the farmers; they need lots of water for their crops. The water company asked people not to water their gardens and their grass. My friend loved her rose bushes so much that she would bring out her saved-up water from washing dishes or taking a shower to give them a drink, but it wasn’t enough. Some of her roses died. As the drought went on and on, people got angry. If they saw their neighbor had a nice green yard, they would be angry that he was not conserving. One of my friends was especially mad at all those swimming pools down in Los Angeles. She said “we should cut the state in two and they should have to find their own water!”

But good things also happened as the drought went on. People learned how precious water was and how to they could share. Some people invented showers and toilets that used less water, other people took shorter showers, or took them less often. The gardens Berkeley began to change. Instead of plants that need water every day, people were learning about drought-resistant plants, plants that had a special talent for surviving without very much water.

The drought was just about over when I arrived in my new home, but it was July. In Pennsylvania I was used to rain one or 2 days a week all year round. But now I found that in California there is no rain in the summer at all! I was amazed that people would leave all kinds of wood furniture and toys out in their yard, they were that sure that it wouldn’t rain in July or August. At first it was fun never having to worry that rain would spoil my plans, but soon I missed it. Instead of stream that were roiling and full like the one by my house in Pennsylvania, these Summer California streams were down to just a trickle or even a damp spot. That’s fine if you get water sent to you in pipes all the way from the mountains, like we people do, but what if you’re a frog, or a fish or a squirrel? Animals like us are made up mostly of water, you are water, I am water, a squirrel is water. We can’t last very long without it.

I’ll never forget when I felt my first California Rain that October. It was just a mist, just a few drops like those first fall rains usually are, but I ran outside just to soak it in, just to feel the first hint that the dry season would really end, that the water was returning, I was looking forward to a time when I could be soaked all the way through my clothes just standing under the sky. Water is precious.

 

Water is between us & connects us – Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern

The journey of one droplet of water is a journey through interconnections.

Let’s start with the droplet as it pours out of a kitchen-sink faucet and into a glass. The hand holding the glass is mostly water too, water that makes up bones and muscles, blood and skin. It is your hand. You are very thirsty. You lift the glass to your mouth and gulp — ahhhhhhhhhhh! — and the droplet goes down, down, into your stomach, where it is absorbed molecule by molecule into your bloodstream. All day long your body takes in poisons from the environment … now the water that streams through your blood vessels takes them to your kidneys to be washed away.

Some more of the water molecules come close to the surface of your skin. You’re out in the hot sun, and sweating. The drops of water come to the surface as sweat and evaporate in the air. The evaporation makes you feel cooler.

The water droplet is floating in the air now, up away from your body and your home, far up into the sky, joining with many other molecules and droplets in a great big cloud. The cloud floats on the wind across the desert and to a dry plain. A young woman stands in a field of wheat. Her face is turned up toward the cloud, hopeful. Her wheat is dying. It’s been a dry summer, and if the wheat doesn’t get enough water to grow well, she will probably have to sell her farm and leave the land she loves. They draw water from under the ground, but they need rain soon. And now the clouds are reflected in her eyes, which are filled with happiness because she sees the storm coming.

The rain falls … the water droplet soaks into the ground and is taken up by the roots of a plant … the plant grows green and strong … water evaporates from its leaves as well, and the droplet moves on the wind once more until it falls into a river.

With countless billions of other water droplets, it rushes to the ocean. The ocean is always in motion, and right now the motion is tremendous: waves rise high, the wind lashes the water into white foam. A storm is raging, and our droplet is right in the middle of it. It bobs up and down, around and around in a circle, forward with a wave and sucked back in the flow of undertow.

Suddenly a storm surge rises — the water overtakes the land. Levees break under the incredible pressure of the billions of water droplets … the walls of houses crumble.

People sit on the roofs of their ruined houses, waiting for boats to carry them away to safety on the surface of the water.

Our droplet flows down city streets that have been turned into rivers by the storm. A boat floats on top of it, going from house to house to save people. Gradually the stream gets smaller and smaller, until it is one of the few droplets in a trickle running off the edge of a quiet street. It has left the city and is on the outskirts, where grass and mud line the road. The droplet is so small it can go between the grains of mud, down into the ground.

Where will it go next? A spring? A stream? A cloud? Will it rain on England, well up from the earth in Zimbabwe, flow through a rice paddy in India, swirl onto the beach in Chile?

Sooner or later it will do each and all of these things, connecting every part of the world and every living being in an ever-moving cycle.

 

Water is powerful – Rev. Laine

Once when I was about 8 or 9, we spent our family vacation in a cottage by a lake. That year it rained so much we were afraid it would ruin our vacation. One afternoon when the rain had stopped my sister, my mom and I went down to the beach to play. The waves were higher than usual, but I didn’t realize how much stronger the current would be until we waded in with our inflatable rafts. For a while it was quite exciting, but then my sister slipped off her raft, which drifted away. I grabbed my sister and pulled her up to the surface, somehow dragging her and my raft back to the shallow water. We were both a little shaken up, but everyone was fine.

Water is powerful. It doesn’t seem like it in the bathtub, but the images we have all seen on TV this week of Hurricane Katrina, and the flood in New Orleans show a power I never imagined. This is the kind of power that turned into the Greek God Poseidon, the moody god of the sea. They say that “When he was in a good mood, Poseidon created new lands in the water and a calm sea — when he was in a bad mood, Poseidon would strike the ground with a trident” causing fierce storms and dangerous waves.

Some people think the ancient Greeks told stories about Poseidon because they didnt have modern science. I believe something different. I believe the Greeks, whose land is on the sea, told these stories because they knew the sea as well as they knew their family. They knew about the moods of the sea, how beautiful and calm it could be sometimes, how scary and brutal it could be other times. They must have known about floods and waves. Sometimes they saw and experienced the kind of things we are seeing in New Orleans right now. They came up with this powerful guy, Poseidon, to help them talk about the power of the sea, a hard thing to talk about with your family on a day like today. You could shake your fist at a character like Poseidon, and tell him how angry you are about the damage this storm did. You could ask why. You could ask him please to take his water and go home.

In Greek mythology the Gods are powerful, but the humans have power too. And when I see those pictures of Hurricane Katrina, I feel as powerless water in a bathtub. But we can already see the power of people when they join together, as water becomes more powerful when a small stream joins a river or a lake. Imagine people coming together like a great sea to heal, to renew, to restore. Water is powerful. And so are we.

 

Water is sacred – Rev. Morgenstern

No wonder people have always imagined water as sacred. As Reverend Darcey said, Poseidon is an image of the power of the sea. Feeling that there are forces stronger than us is one way to experience the sacred. Other qualities of sacredness are also qualities of water.

Water is precious.
Water is beautiful.
It gives life.
It brings death and destruction.
It quenches our thirst.
It flows between every part of the world — it is everywhere.
It is all one even though it takes many different forms.
It connects all of us, humans, other animals, plants, making us interdependent.

And so people all over the world and all through time have given water the name of a god or goddess. In Latvia, Mara rules the earth and water … In Africa, Yemaya is the Mother of All Salt WatersÑBabylonians called her Tiamat … Oshun is the Mother of all Sweet Waters … others have a God of the Sweet Waters, Apsu … Oya is the goddess of huge rainstorms and tornadoes … Suijin is a water god in Japan, and Varuna a god of the ocean in India … everywhere people have said, each in their own language and religion, “water is sacred.”

In our religion, twenty-five years ago, some of the women who gathered for the “Women and Religion” continental convocation created a water ritual. They wanted to celebrate the way they were connected to each other and to all of life, just as water connects us to each other and all of life. So they each brought water and poured it into a bowl in the center of their circle. As they did, they shared what water meant to them. I don’t know what they said. Maybe some of them said it reminded them of a special place. Maybe some of them said it symbolized power, or beauty, or change. Like us, they each had a different connection to the water they brought — and the waters mingled together, just as they came together, and just as we come together here today. They were holy, and the water is holy, and we are holy, and the life we share is holy.