Water Is Life - PaganSquare - PaganSquare

Water, you are the origin of life, the blood of the Earth, the greatest portion of our very bodies. Water, you flow gently to quench and sooth, and rage in torrents to cleanse and reshape. Water, you protected us in the womb, and are a daily necessity throughout our lives. Water, you circulate through air and earth connecting all things to all things. Water you are life, may we be your protectors.

I was raised along the banks of Clear Creek. As a child its holy and joy-filled voice was always within my hearing. In the summer I lived in the creek as a small pale prune-like being, seeing how long I could hold my breath submerged in its icy embrace, or floating on top of it past blackberry brambles and ferns unfurled, or strengthening my muscles swimming against its current and under its falls. In the winter my Grandma Peggy would stand on the back patio and will the creek, swollen and powerful with storm water, not to rise higher than the back garden. She stood watch those dark winter hours, and fretted mightily every time a log crashed its way past her house. Always Clear Creek sang to me as it gently flowed, or raged past me.

As an adult I live on the edge of the Laguna de Santa Rosa watershed between the Russian River flowing northwest to the Pacific Ocean, and the Petaluma River flowing south. Each week when I drive southeast to work as a chaplain in Berkeley, I leave my watershed then follow the Petaluma river down to where it empties into San Pablo Bay, then I cross the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge where San Pablo Bay flows into San Francisco Bay. I am aware as I drive over that sparkling expanse of holy water of all the places it has been as it travelled with longing toward the Pacific Ocean. Some of that holy water travelled from as far away as Mt. Shasta in the north, (not far from where Clear Creek flows into Whiskeytown Lake and then continues to join the Sacramento River). Some of that holy water flowed from the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains far to the east. Some of that holy water came from the San Joaquin River and its tributaries flowing northwest. All of it gave life as it flowed through the vast rich farmland that is the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, land that feeds millions of people all over the world and is home to water beings, green bloods, red bloods, and thousands of migratory winged beings.

Recently I learned one of my ancestors, Eliza Ann Conway Bassham, was born on the Missouri River. Her mother gave her life on a riverboat as that holy river, the longest river on the North American continent, flowed on its way to join the Mississippi River on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri River begins in Montana on the east side of the continental divide. From there it flows southeast through North Dakota and Sioux land where thousands of water protectors are even now amassed to honor the Missouri and make sure it continues to flow clean beyond their home at Standing Rock as it travels through South Dakota, touching the edges of Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas before joining the Mississippi in Missouri. From its origin to its end it provides life and habitat for beings of all kinds as it flows through. The ranks of the water protectors have swollen into a powerful force like my Clear Creek in the winter. This is about way more than a particular pipeline in a particular place. This is about the water protectors, who are the descendants of the first peoples, coming together with prayer and ceremony and common purpose. This is also about people like me, a descendant of those who took land and broke treaties with the first peoples, deciding to either compound that wrong, or stand as an ally with the descendants of those my ancestors harmed. This is about the clash of ideas and systems of living with and on the earth that have been working themselves through on the North American continent for about five hundred years. This is about honoring water as life and the earth as sacred.

Blessings on water, which is life. Blessings on the waters of every womb out of which life is born. Blessings on creeks and rivers, lagunas and bays, gulfs and oceans which support all life on earth. And in all times, but particularly in this time, blessings on those who protect the water.

Some ways we can donate to support the Water Protectors at Standing Rock:

Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council - coordinates medical and healer supplies, human resources, and other types of medical/healing aid for all the Standing Rock camps. www.medichealercouncil.com/donate/

Water Protector Legal Collective - the nonprofit legal organization on-site at the #NoDAPL resistance camps. www.waterprotectorlegal.org

Red Warrior Camp - was established in partnership with the Sacred Stone Camp to help guide the nonviolent direct action resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline www.gofundme.com/redwarriorcamp

Oceti Sakowin Camp and Sacred Stone Camps

www.ocetisakowincamp.org/donate

www.gofundme.com/sacredstonecamp

***blog photo of Clear Creek by Fred Wilcox