Homily - As Tranquil Streams Meet and Merge

September 13, 2009 -- Matt Alspaugh

Water. It seems so simple. How very ordinary. Familiar, everyday. And yet, special, mysterious, life-giving, with an energy of its own.

The mystics understood water. In the Taoist tradition, water is often symbolic for a way of being in the world, soft and giving, yet able to wear away stone. Water seeks the lowest level, but fills every gap. Water easily joins with other water, so that small streams can become great rivers.

Our story of the swimmer is based on a parable by Chung Tsu, a Taoist teacher living about the fourth century before the Common Era. Chung Tsu often included Confucius in his stories, even though Confucianism was a competing or at least complementary tradition. Perhaps he did this to gain credibility, like Plato does in writing of Socrates, or the gospel writers have Jesus do in quoting Hebrew Scriptures.

But back to the Tao. In the story, the swimmer at the waterfall shows how we might move through all the turmoil and turbulence of life. Like the swimmer, we neither resist what would overwhelm us nor do we just passively 'go with the flow'. Instead, if we are wise, we use the energy of the turbulence of life, diving down, popping back up, to create a rich and full life. To do this we have to be aware of the virtual water that is life around us, to discern its currents and eddies, and merge with the flow or move through as we can. We become expert swimmers in the sea of life.  In conflicts, we seek out a third way, rather than choosing sides.  In creative work, we may have long periods of just being, trying to wait patiently as the creative muses flow through us, letting our talents emerge.

Today is our Ingathering and Water Service, which we do annually, at the beginning of the church year. Now many religions have practices that must not change, ancient rites and rituals whose origins are lost in the mists of history, or whose sources are fabricated apologies providing explanations that support the existing power structures. We are a bit more flexible. Our Unitarian and Universalist rituals are often relatively recent in origin. Our chalice lighting ritual is a few decades old; the springtime Flower Communion originated in Europe right before World War II. Today's ingathering service includes the Water Ritual, which was the creation of two women in 1980. There is a story behind this Ritual.

In 1960 the Unitarian and the Universalist denominations merged. The merger of these two different but religiously liberal movements had been contemplated for nearly a century.  The song we sang earlier, 'As Tranquil Streams Meet and Merge' was written about the possibility of this merger, in the hopes that we would merge these two movements into something bigger and stronger. 

When the U and the U merged into the UU, one of the things the group had to do, and it was quite controversial, was write out a statement of purpose. This became our Principles and Purposes.  (HOLD UP FRAMED COPY OF OLD ONE) Now this early one was unsatisfactory in many ways, and in particular, it had extraneous masculine language; the text was sprinkled with words like 'brotherhood' or 'mankind.'

In 1977, a lay leader named Lucille Longview got a resolution passed at the General Assembly of our UU denomination that asked the denomination and the churches to avoid sexist language.
This was called the "Women in Religion Resolution", and from it, emerged a rewrite of the Principles and Purposes.  This rewrite, you should know, was long and contentious, as difficult theological questions had to be addressed. Somehow, the movement found a middle way, and the result was the Principles and Purposes we read today. These were passed by the 1984 General Assembly and amended in 1985.

During this process of agitating for a rewrite of the Principles, some three hundred women, and some men, met at what was called the Women in Religion conference in Michigan in 1980.  The woman who started this whole process, Lucille Longview, along with Carolyn McDade (a songwriter -- author of our closing hymn today) decided to create a ritual for this event, which they called the Water Ritual. Persons were asked to bring water from home and to ritually combine it. They were invited to briefly share a few words on the meaning of the water, and to take some back home if they wished. According to the creators, this ritual reminded participants that they were connected by a universal symbol, water, and that through water, they were connected to the totality of life.

The Water Ritual helped this group to go forward to join with others to create and obtain passage of new Principles and Purposes. The Water Ritual helped bind them together in a time of ingathering, before the real work began.

So the Water Ritual that we celebrate today is a continuation of this practice, an ingathering as we come together, connect or reconnect with others, reforming this community after the relative quiet of the summer.

So the water for us is a reminder of interconnection.  Tony Hoagland reminds us of this interconnection, water being part of other water, river to ocean, rain to dew, cloud to puddle, a complex and beautiful and energetic web of interconnection in space and time.  And something does turn and stir within us, we are part of other water, for, after all, our bodies are almost two-thirds water, and our blood is as salty as some ancient sea.

Our animal selves know this. We yearn for the interconnection with water, we take delight in still waters and flowing streams, in waves crashing on some sandy shore, we love the smell of summer rain, and the sparkle of the sun on new snow.  Our Water Ritual symbolizes our longing for interconnection not only with each other, with people, but with the water in its various forms, and with all of the natural world, all of creation. We are reminded of our interconnection with the web of existence. Like water, we seek our place in the nature of things.