Please click the link to watch Rev. Cynthia’s video recording of this sermon.
I am old enough that I spent my childhood without air conditioning. I remember my brother, sister and I lying on the wood floor of our living room in front of a box fan begging our mother to please, please take us to the local lake where we could get into the cool water.
I remember too the summer that men came to cut down the dying apple trees spotted through the corn field behind our house. My mother made lemon orangeade with fresh squeezed lemons and oranges and had us go with her to offer glasses of it to the men out back sweating with the work and the heat.
As I shared last week, Florida and Texas have recently both banned jurisdictions from mandating water breaks for outdoor workers. This seems particularly cruel to me.
A cup or a glass of some liquid refreshment is a sign of welcome and care. If I should come to your home, the first thing you are likely to offer me after a seat is a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of ice water.
We had indoor running water in the house in which I grew up, but neither of my parents had that in their childhoods. My mother would occasionally take us back to the house in which she had grown up. We weren’t there to visit with the new family living there. We were there to go to the spring by the house. The water was cold and clear, and a cup stood in the spring’s enclosure for those who would drink. My mother thought the spring water might be better for the survival of our goldfish than our well water. It didn’t make much difference for that, though.
Our house was on a well. So was the church I went to with my family. But one year when I was in my teens the church’s well ran dry. Fortunately, the township had just extended municipal water lines up the church’s road. My father and other men from the church dug trenches and laid pipe out to the road to connect to the municipal water.
We had options. We had indoor plumbing at home, at church, at school. Many around the world do not have that.
A 2023 report by the World Health Organization noted, “… globally, 1.8 billion people live in households without water supplies on the premises. Women and girls … are primarily responsible for water collection in 7 out of 10 such households…. In most cases, women and girls make longer journeys to collect it, losing time in education, work, and leisure, and putting themselves at risk of physical injury and dangers on the way.”
We have brought water today. Even if we have brought it from our travels, we did not likely have to walk miles to fetch it or, if we did, we likely considered those miles a hike and not a chore.
But these waters of our water communion service were brought to us by women. The first Unitarian Universalist water communion service was created in 1980 by two Unitarian Universalist women—Carolyn McDade and Lucile Schuck Longview, who were asked to create a worship service for the Women and Religion Continental Convocation of Unitarian Universalists, The Original Water Ritual (UUA.org).
McDade and Longview write of the service, “Water is more than simply a metaphor. It is elemental and primary, calling forth feelings of awe and reverence. Acknowledging that the ocean is considered by many to be the place from which all life on our planet came—it is the womb of life—and that amniotic waters surround each of us prenatally, we now realize that [this worship service] was for us a new story of creation… We choose water as our symbol of our empowerment.”
One of you last week brought the children’s book Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior to see if we wanted to use it today. We won’t read the book, but briefly it tells the story of Peltier and her great aunt, Josephine Henrietta Mandamin. Peltier is “Anishinaabe and an Indigenous Water Protector from…Ontario. In 2012, at the age of eight, Autumn discovered that many First Nations Communities in Ontario were on boil-water advisories—some for several years—and she began speaking out about the importance of water on her reserve. Earlier, “In 2003, [her great aunt[ Josephine cofounded the Mother Earth Water Walkers. Comprised of women from different clans, Mother Earth Water Walkers is an Anishinaabekweg-led organization that draws attention to the water crises in its communities and around the world by walking the perimeter of the Great Lakes.”
In a foreword to the book, Peltier writes, “In our culture, we look at water as a living being, and we are taught to treat it with the same respect we would show another human. Water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth. It gives all life, and there is no life without it.”
The Unitarian Universalists of Puerto Rico shared these words for water communion: “We bring our waters, which have touched the west, the north, the south and the east, which come from the sky, the surface of the earth and from deep wells and springs within the earth.
“We bring water that belonged to lakes, streams, and reservoirs of fresh waters that quench our thirst.
“We bring water that is a part of the great oceans and the seas that circle the globe, teeming with life, the source of all life.
“We bring water to this place of meeting and sharing.
“In this water there is new water, formed in the atmosphere daily, there is old water, water as old as the earth, water from which life has evolved over the eons.
“This is the stream of life from which all life flows.
“All people are connected by this stream, for it runs through our veins and courses through the stems and leaves of plants.
“It is the symbol of the cleansing power of forgiveness and the faithful promise of healing love.
“It is the symbol and the reality of the oneness that unites humankind and all life.
“Today we bring water
“To give back to the earth,
“To mingle with all the waters of the earth and join all living things.
“Today we pour water
“To honor the earth that gives us life,
“To honor the community of all life, Plants, animals and people.
“Today we offer thanks for the gift of water and also for the web of life we all share, near or far.
“May our separate waters join into one sacred stream as we add our lives into the stream of living souls who live out love, work for justice and hunger for peace.”
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