Wander 16: The Blessing of Water

In the days leading up to this New Moon, snow found the mountains here. Then the clouds moved, expanded and came down to grace us in this desert valley with her water. The snow came soon after the literal buzz and roar of this tourist town finally had dissipated. The snow came like a blanket to tuck us into winter.

When we lived in New York, I remember returning to our 1st floor apartment after a long day of lucky holiday travel, only to find that we could not get into our apartment because of the snow drifts that enveloped our door. How wild it felt burrowing into our brownstone in the middle of the night, flakes still falling around us. And when I was in school there and quite lonesome, I remember how wild and delicious it would feel to walk along the bustling westside highway on blustery, snowy nights, bundled in a coat like a sleeping bag, feeling the wind and snow on my face, feeling the aliveness, the wildness of the snow, and for a few minutes forgetting the very non-wilderness experience of living in a big city.

One of the ways I feel the snows’ blessing is how it re-wilds us. Corners of the earth where we have Tetris-ed now only in concrete, get to feel connected to the maternal source of winter’s water. It blankets each available surface in crystalized water. Snow blesses in wild equality when it comes. It blesses the messes we’ve made of our Mother Earth with parking lots and landfills, and it blesses the rocks and trees we’ve left alone, for now. They all get touched by this wild grace of frozen water. My 14-month old instinctually fills an empty can and scoops himself a cup or two. My mind starts to go quiet, listening for the crunch of my boots, feeling where it is pillow soft as I step and where, the iciness of it gives some resistance to my boot. The snow and her air invigorate my nose and lungs with her aliveness. 

And why wouldn’t she invigorate me? She is the water that sustains my life. The water that courses down this mountain, the water that courses through my body’s every organs. Bless this water. Bless her for blessing us with our lives.

This coming Monday is our Winter Solstice. As I co-create a ceremony with others for this day, I am thinking of the returning light, yes, but also the waters. The darkest day is a time to honor the cleansing cycle of death and rebirth. Water carries us forward into new life, incubates us, makes pools and rivers in the cells of our bodies, our veins, baptizes us in what we hold sacred, wets our eyes so we might gaze in reverence on the beauty of each other from behind these masks. She blankets our frazzled nervous systems with her snow and says “Breathe”. She offers us seemingly eternal cleansing. 

We are also need to offer our own powers of cleansing, of thanks, of blessing. And many of us have not been taking very good care of her, of us.

On this New Moon, on this Solstice, I invite you to bless the waters of your life. Within yourself, within the other beings you touch, carried through our taps and toilets, carried through our towns, picking up our wastes and runoffs, damned as they long to reach Grandmother Ocean. Make them an offering.