Water
Water
Each autumn we gather to mingle our waters and mark the start of our liturgical year. At each of our three campuses, we gather to share our dreams, to declare our values, to be present to each other, and all that is. Today, across the country, in congregations like this one, Unitarian Universalists are gathering for the same ritual and for the same purpose.
In services such as this, water is often described as the giver of life and bearer of memory. Our mingled waters are said to represent the communion that we aspire to in religious community. Sometimes, the waters take on a richness of meaning: reminding us of the drought of struggle, of the inevitability of change, of the tumult of life, and the hidden wells of awe and wonder that reside in each of us. Rarely, though, do services like this one recognize the sheer destructive power of water.
Water is the life giver. Two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, that is what makes life possible. But water is also the life taker, the destroyer, the thing that can fill lungs and block out the two uncompounded atoms we must have to respire.
I have been thinking about water the life stealer since I learned I would be coming to Houston to serve as your interim senior minister. One friend told me to get an escape kit for my car: hammer to break glass and cutter to slice seat belt. Another advised me not to get a first story apartment. This advice came as, from afar, I read about the destruction of Harvey: the more than eighty dead, the lives broken, the houses ruined, the streets washed away, and the businesses destroyed.
Then I arrived in Houston. And I met one of you who had lost their home to the hurricane. And I met another of you whose car was destroyed. And another of you who no longer lives in their old neighborhood. And I learned of the city’s loss and sorrow. And so, I began to think about water as the stealer of life, water the despoiler.
I realized that we could not have a water ceremony that did not acknowledge the catastrophic power of water. For water has brought a great catastrophe to this city. One of the tasks of religious community is to aid us in the face of the catastrophes of our lives. These can be individual: cancer, death, the end of a marriage, the loss of a job… Or they can be collective: war, political corruption, systematic violence, the endurance of white supremacy, floods and hurricanes…
Some of the most ancient myths attempt to find meaning in waterborne catastrophes. Four thousand years ago the Epic of Gilgamesh was composed in the place we now call Mesopotamia. It tells of a great deluge that destroyed a primordial city.
For a day the gale [winds flattened the country,]
quickly they blew, and [then came] the [Deluge.]
Like a battle [the cataclysm] passed over the people.
One man could not discern another,
nor could people be recognized amid the destruction.
Genesis, the biblical text, recounts:
All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,
And the floodgates of the sky broke open.
The Greek poet Ovid, in his “Metamorphoses,” describes:
…The dolphins
Invade the woods and brush against the oak-trees;
The wolf swims with the lamb; lion and tiger
Are borne along together; the wild boar
Finds all his strength is useless, and the deer
Cannot outspeed that torrent…
These myths share a pattern. The deluge comes after the divine grows frustrated with human wickedness. The gods send the lethal waters to wash away sin and impurity. Cities are drown. The world becomes ocean. Only a handful of the righteous survive. And then the waters recede. The land returns. The world is purified. Humanity finds itself given a divine blessing, a divine healing. Noah is told: “Be fertile and increase, and fill the earth.”
This is not our theology. Our Unitarian Universalist theology is not one of divine destruction and divine healing. We do not believe that God punishes us because we are impure or wicked. Nor do we trust that God, unaided, will bring ultimate justice to the world.
Ours is a tradition of human agency and responsibility. Ours is a tradition which acknowledges that it is humans who have the power to create heaven or hell upon this muddy green Earth. Ours is a tradition that recognizes that so much that is wrong with this world, including the crisis of climate change, has been wrought by human hands. And ours is a tradition that understands that the good that exists in this world comes from love. It is a love, which Susan Frederick-Gray, the president of our association, describes as “a powerful, unconditional, overflowing goodwill for all people.”
It is this love which is the historic, theological, bedrock of Unitarian Universalist congregations. It is this love that our Universalist ancestors used to describe as “the sublime and heavenly doctrine of universal grace.” The idea that God so loved the world that all of creation would be eventually blessed with “holiness and happiness.” It is the legacy of our Universalist ancestors who believed that the unconditional love of the divine, in the words of Rebecca Parker, “directs us… toward actions of love and care for each other.” It is this love which teaches us that we have the human power and the human ability to heal each other and to heal this world.
This world, and this city, is in desperate need of healing. Today, more than ever, we are called to be healers. Over the last month as I have listened to your stories I have learned that this congregation has worked to heed this call. Many of you aided each other during and after the hurricane. Many of you have labored to rebuild the city, volunteering your time to recraft homes and assist the injured. Many of you are devoted to the ongoing work of healing. Even as we struggle to survive.
I will admit that I am new to your city and to this congregation. I only know of a fraction of the destruction that the waters brought. And I only know a fraction of the work that you have done. I am eager to learn your stories.
And I trust that as I learn about them I will discover in them, as I have discovered in every community I have served, the radical healing power of love. For it is radical love, powerful, unconditional, overflowing goodwill for all people, that teaches us that we can heal each other and the world. And it is radical love that I see now as I look at our mingled water. Water might be destructive but in our service, it can also be a symbol of our collective love for humanity and our planetary home. It can be a symbol of our ability to heal.
As I close I reminded of these words from Wayne Arnason, may we find the love they represent in our mingled water:
Take courage friends.
The way is often hard, the path is never clear,
and the stakes are very high.
Take courage.
For deep down, there is another truth:
you are not alone.
Amen and Blessed Be.
