Not too long ago, and not too far away, a beloved poet of our faith blessed the first Water Ceremony with those words. And those women who sang it with her were coming home something unique. A ritual that could reflect their lives better than anything else had. Later in the 80s, Ms. McDade and Lucile Shuck Longview recalled this about their ritual:
It was created by lay women, women who had long been silent in the pews. The ritual space was also made sacred by the women themselves. We gathered to worship in a way authentic and liberating to us, not as in a church but in a semicircle around a large common earthen bowl. It was a ritual of women's being connected by a universal symbol, water, a ritual of women being connected to the totality of life.1
It’s a powerful thing, to find a pool that both reflects and restores us. Like many of you, I waded into this faith from other waters. We come here thirsty. Thirsty for new rituals, new language, new cycles to build a place to come home to.
I imagine that’s why this practice caught on with so many Unitarian Universalists. This practice refreshes the worn out after the busyness of summer. Right as we wade back into our collective, religious lives. It welcomes us home. So do our Principles and Sources. And so do our covenants. Now we wade back into the physical ties of our relationships. And the promises that keep them.
So often, I notice people in my life – myself included – making promises through assumption. But we see clear to the bottom of our assumed promises when they get bruised and broken. I’ve been there, and so have you. Someone, maybe even yourself, did or said something that bruised or broke a relationship. Something that left you wondering, did we really need to agree not to do, not to say, what you just did??
What I just did?
But. Think with some compassion about the times you fell short in your life. What was churning in the waters of your life, that day?
Now, extend that thoughtful compassion to someone else. What was swimming in their waters?
Of course, that may explain what happened. But an explanation is not always an excuse. Peoples’ waters slosh all over each other when they’re together in community. There’s joy and playfulness there. And it’s also uncomfortably wet, and sometimes messy. So what can hold the sloshing for everyone’s flourishing enjoyment?
Here, where so many rivers meet, our covenants keep us from running through each others’ courses. So the mightiest, strongest rivers won’t lap up the tiniest creeks. So that each may make its way into the great lake of our common life.
Because the waters of our lives, however they flow, whatever else they carry, carry many gifts. Silt and debris and the things we pick up along the our meandering ways. Detritus which nourishes the deltas. Oxbows and gentle bends that cradle precious, tender life. And rushing rapids that have churned mills and powerplants, challenged salmon and enticed bears. All those waters have urged life on and empowered it. Their gifts might be visible, jutting our peaking out above the waterline. But in a fast moving river, like the world around us, they are often quietly hidden at the bottom.
Which makes me wonder this. What if the covenants we make aren’t just boundaries that keep us from washing each other away? If a covenant is a promise about how we want to treat each other, what other promises will it hold? Can it be a promise about how we share our gifts?
When I build covenants with groups, I have a favourite addition. “Move forward, move back.” If you are a frequent contributor, we will welcome you to let someone else’s ideas come forward. And if you are one to hang back, let’s welcome your ideas more. But what if, when we covenant to move forward and move back, we weren’t just talking about talking. What if we considered sharing our talents, our passions and hobbies. What if we welcomed those of the people beside us?
Great things are possible here and nowhere else. Not because this congregation is some exceptional center of the universe. But because in no other place will these gifts, these waters, flow together. I remember this when turning to adrienne marie brown’s Emergent Strategy. The fourth principle of her work is this: “There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.”2 There are things which only our gifts together can make possible. We just have to find them, water them, and bring them home.
1. Lucile Longview and Rosemary Matson, "The Water Ritual," Unitarian Universalist Women and Religion May 21, 1997, https://www.uuwr.org/resources/the-water-ritual
2. adrienne marie brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (AK Press, 2017), 41.