Mother Water, Friend of Life
Wash away the unthoughtful
May all the plants and animals I love
always have the benefit of your presence.
May your streams and lakes and rivers and oceans
everywhere run clean and whole
Thank you for your gifts
Our love always to you
Mother Water
**********************
DISCLAIMER
Obviously, drinking rainwater from a bowl you set out in your back yard is a
potentially hazardous activity, and I am not recommending anyone do it and am
not responsible if you get sick. Equally obviously, this is part of my spiritual life and
might have no beneficial effect on you whatsoever
(and most likely won't.)
**********************
For the first time ever in my life, aside from the odd drop caught on my tongue, I drank rainwater. Why?
It's a potentially risky business, even subversive, this drinking of unlicensed, unregulated, unchlorinated, unfluorinated water. Even the air has bacteria in it, not to mention a few other things, and although I placed my rain-gathering bowl carefully away from all overhanging branches and such, there were still a few mystery particles in the bowl when I came to drink a rainy day's worth of rainwater. Might I get sick? I might. Will it have been worth it if I do get sick? Yes. Why? For 8 ounces of water? 8 ounces that I could have more easily gotten from the nice safe chlorinated fluoridated water that comes from the tap?
It's a potentially risky business, even subversive, this drinking of unlicensed, unregulated, unchlorinated, unfluorinated water. Even the air has bacteria in it, not to mention a few other things, and although I placed my rain-gathering bowl carefully away from all overhanging branches and such, there were still a few mystery particles in the bowl when I came to drink a rainy day's worth of rainwater. Might I get sick? I might. Will it have been worth it if I do get sick? Yes. Why? For 8 ounces of water? 8 ounces that I could have more easily gotten from the nice safe chlorinated fluoridated water that comes from the tap?
This is the sort of thing that is impossible to explain to someone who regards water as merely stuff, who regards the physical world as just a random assemblage of dead matter of little consequence. What conversation can there be, between one person who regards water as merely an atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen, and another who regards it as the very stuff of life? Sacred? A goddess? There is no connection between the two worldviews. They don't coexist whatsoever.
It all began with me noticing the effect of rainwater on my garden. Now, some folks might just use water from the tap to water their garden, but I take a certain care to get the chlorine out of the water I use for the plants, as best I can anyway. Even so, the difference in growth between the results of a watering day and the results of a rainy day are striking. If the plants could jump after a rain, they would jump. There is a visible growth spurt. Some people observe this same phenomena and rationalize it as the result of dissolved nitrogen and oxygen in the water. I have not done the science myself so who knows, perhaps they are right. To me, it is water from heaven, water from the gods. How could it not be good for the plants?
Anyway, I figured, it does plants wonders, why not see what it does to me? So I set out my bowl in the morning and embarked on my slightly risky and definitely subversive endeavor. It rained all day and was a little cool (in contrast to last week when it was like a sweat bath), and towards evening I went out to see how much rain I had caught in the bowl. There was a small amount of unidentifiable brownish-black well decomposed organic matter in it. The first shock to my senses was that this water had a flavor. It had a considerable flavor: weedy, pollen-y, piney, with perhaps a tiny aroma of diesel fume in the background. I live in the city, after all. It tasted like this place, like the land. I drank carefully, meditatively, avoiding stirring up the organic matter at the bottom.
What did I experience? What I experienced was powerful and moving, though untranslatable in words. Feeling the presence of the gods with me, sustaining me. Gratitude. Timelessness, or a different sort of time. Even now, sitting at my desk drinking a decidedly unspiritual Dr. Pepper, I feel different than I did before.
This bowl contained a sacrament, the sacrament of the way I follow. Not an inebriant, like Christian wine. Not an entheogen like peyote or ayahuasca. Not food, like the other Christian sacrament. Simultaneously the simplest thing and most profound determinant of life. Rain. I drink from the same sky as my plants, we live as part of the same life. Mother Water, carried aloft by the Sky Fathers and sent to Earth as the fertilizing combination of the powers of both of them. Sky and Water, and even a little Earth in the form of the mystery organic stuff. This is my religion, and I see my gods every day. It does not require faith, it requires a different way of living and seeing, and a different morality. To strive for total reverence and respect for all things, to desire to be at peace with all things, and to listen to the gods and spirits.
This is my sacrament. Rain.
Anyway, I figured, it does plants wonders, why not see what it does to me? So I set out my bowl in the morning and embarked on my slightly risky and definitely subversive endeavor. It rained all day and was a little cool (in contrast to last week when it was like a sweat bath), and towards evening I went out to see how much rain I had caught in the bowl. There was a small amount of unidentifiable brownish-black well decomposed organic matter in it. The first shock to my senses was that this water had a flavor. It had a considerable flavor: weedy, pollen-y, piney, with perhaps a tiny aroma of diesel fume in the background. I live in the city, after all. It tasted like this place, like the land. I drank carefully, meditatively, avoiding stirring up the organic matter at the bottom.
What did I experience? What I experienced was powerful and moving, though untranslatable in words. Feeling the presence of the gods with me, sustaining me. Gratitude. Timelessness, or a different sort of time. Even now, sitting at my desk drinking a decidedly unspiritual Dr. Pepper, I feel different than I did before.
This bowl contained a sacrament, the sacrament of the way I follow. Not an inebriant, like Christian wine. Not an entheogen like peyote or ayahuasca. Not food, like the other Christian sacrament. Simultaneously the simplest thing and most profound determinant of life. Rain. I drink from the same sky as my plants, we live as part of the same life. Mother Water, carried aloft by the Sky Fathers and sent to Earth as the fertilizing combination of the powers of both of them. Sky and Water, and even a little Earth in the form of the mystery organic stuff. This is my religion, and I see my gods every day. It does not require faith, it requires a different way of living and seeing, and a different morality. To strive for total reverence and respect for all things, to desire to be at peace with all things, and to listen to the gods and spirits.
This is my sacrament. Rain.
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