Waters of Life

Durrow Abbey Well, Ireland

And may the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
from a Scottish blessing
The last of the three Celtic spirituality sessions I'm leading at Trenton United Church was rescheduled for next Wednesday so I've continued to explore our last subject area, which is the earth-honouring aspect of the tradition. There are plenty of holy mountains, sacred trees, and sacred wells/springs in Celtic Christianity, many of which were likely established as auspicious places before the first missionaries arrived in Ireland and Scotland.

Scholars don't really know to what extent these holy sites were adopted by Christians because there were no pre-Christian records, but the wells and springs became places where baptisms occurred and healings were purported to take place. When Roman Catholicism supplanted Celtic Christianity the sacredness of these wells continued to be recognized and even to the present day there are Masses said and annual gatherings at many of them.



Refreshing my memory about this has prompted me to consider the degree to which we desecrate rather than honour our abundant fresh water in Canada. The Aboriginal peoples of this land are far more likely to speak of water as sacred. Even though water imagery is plentiful in scripture and baptism is a sacrament, we Christians don't make much of a fuss about our rivers and lakes and other bodies of water.

Perhaps we should listen more closely to both Celtic and Aboriginal perspectives on water. Not long ago the excellent Environmental Commissioner for Ontario Diane Saxe (since eliminated by the Regressive Conservatives) informed us that a shocking amount of raw sewage flows into the Great Lakes, which are also a source of drinking water for millions --duh! And many First Nations communities have lived without a regular source of clean drinking water for decades.

It seems to me that we need to return to a sense of the sacred and sacramental for our water, a recognition that it is God-given, the gift of the Creator. Perhaps it's time to conduct worship more often at the edge of waterways and to recall that Jesus' baptism was in a river, a sign of grace and abundant life.  

Of course we can also challenge governments at all levels to ensure that there is clean
water for all..



Water is the most life sustaining gift on Mother Earth
 and is the interconnection among all living beings. 
Water sustains us, flows between us, within us, and replenishes us. 
Water is the blood of Mother Earth and, as such,
cleanses not only herself, but all living things. 

Assembly of First Nations