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Of course, we're made of it, mostly, but also, we revel in the ebb and flow of it; the dripping, splattering, waves-crashing noise of it; the thirst-quenching, snow-crunching, swim-through feel of it; the misting, falling, rainbow-casting-prism joy of it. Water is that which unites us—in our sweat and tears, and in the very life's blood of our bodies: we are together...through water. So it's no wonder that water and configurations of it figure prominently in philosophy, art, and literature of all kinds.
This week, I offer a poem that appears in our very hymnal (528) as a meditative reading, the testimony of an African-American, likely gay, male, playwright, columnist, novelist, social activist, poet, and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, using the waters of a river to symbolize...well, we'll discuss on Thursday!
I've Known Rivers
Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world
and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi
when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
What do you think about the equation of rivers with the growing and shared depths of a soul?
If you were to write a poem about your own growing soul, of its heritage, struggles, and depths, what rivers would you cite?
What sort of body of water would Unitarian Universalism be?
This Sunday, we celebrate a ritual known as Water Communion to symbolize a return to the ocean source of our religious community after summers of tributary adventures. We will each bring water to a common bowl, emptying our collective love and energy and intention into the wellspring of a new congregational year that will course forward from that moment. We will join our diverse water caches to a collective new whole, just as the varied sources of our faith contribute to our movement’s ongoing life, just as the drops of our lives coalesce and become something greater than the sum of their parts. I look forward to being in community with you during the service and also afterwards, at a potluck picnic. It will be good to begin A New Chapter of our lives together with intention.
And don't forget to bring your backpacks or purses or briefcases—whatever you tote around with you—so that we might add this community’s intentions and blessings to it with a small token of love as a reminder of the power of our connection at UUCMC.
Let's gather in. Here we go!
Rev. Craig
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