Water is Life

so why don't we rever it as the one true god...

This was not my first spiritual pilgrimage, nor will it be my last. Surprisingly, it continued on a theme that started in my awareness many years ago while out on a Hamblechya—a vision quest.

Have you ever sat out in the elements and fasted? Have you ever contemplated a life without clean, fresh water? It might just have us reconsidering this whole Monotheism thing…

This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.

Video Transcription:

Many was showny. Water is life.

Ever since coming home from this France trip and having such a heart-opening experience near the water, I have noticed in fact that the water keeps bringing new messages and opening up my heart. In fact, I was just out here the other day watering the garden, tending to the life that is thriving out here since I've been away and I just started crying, crying again. You know still I'm not certain that I could put into words exactly why or what is happening but the water in my being seems to be shifting.

I've known for a long time that water is essentially a liquid crystal that it has the capacity to hold reams of data. It's just the we as humans don't yet know how to imprint or extract that data once it's been imprinted. Now I say that as an over-generalization because there are people who have known how to do these things and our culture at large poo-poo's them as woo-woo and usually silly little uncivilized beings. But that is probably another conversation for another time as I was out here standing in the sun and watering all the plants and crying, crying in the presence of water.

I was reminded of the last time I went out for a humbletcha a vision quest. I visited with the Choctaw out there in Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma and it was a deeply powerful ceremony as they always are. So humbletcha you know in I'll try to make it succinct. It is a ceremony that is usually offered in preparation for the Sundance for somebody who is committed to dancing in the Sundance. I have sat for a humbletcha twice with the intention of dancing and life has come in with other dances for me that have claimed priority. And that's okay, that is as it should be.

But on this last sit that I had, I came away with it wondering very seriously why we don't worship water as God. So you take about four days in preparation to go sit and each of those days you are making prayer ties and you're sitting with your crew of support and usually elders. You're tying your prayer ties and then you have an innepi every day of the sweat lodge that you know one day represents the mind, the body, the heart and the spirit. So we go through four days of preparation. And on the fourth day you go directly from your sweat out to the area that you'll sit for the next three to four days. Traditionally women only need to go for three days and men go for four days. But these days women choose to do all of it. So if you feel cold. Excuse me.

And what I really walked away from on that last sit was the experience of being a plant that you're rooted in a 12 by 12 space more or less. And it's just you and your blanket and your pipe. And you really literally are just out there to watch the grass grow, to naval gaze. Humbletcha means to cry for a vision. You do cry when you're out there. I mean, it's a rare occasion when one doesn't. Not necessarily because you're in pain, but because to be with oneself for that long is so deeply moving.

But you're not just with yourself. You are sitting in the elements. You experience the sun in all its glory. With all of its effects, you get to know the wind and the cloud people and the critters who come across your path as you're sitting out there. And I had that experience of being in relationship with the sun and the effects of the sun as it penetrated the cells of my being. I really felt so intimately connected with the plants out there and how the sun penetrates the cells of a plant's being and is nourishment, right? It acts on the oh, my perimenopausal brain is failing me in this moment. The chlorophyll to generate nourishment.

Now, I don't have chlorophyll and I hardly have melanin to act as protection and that's an experience all of its own. But out in Oklahoma, that's, you know, you're in the plains. The weather can change on a dime. And sometimes it does. And it was quite a thing to be like I said in relationship to the clouds and to appeal to them for support for my lily white ass. For a little protection, please. I don't have the, I'm like an indoor house plant that was placed outside for three days, you know? I don't know if you have experience with that, but there's a delicacy, right? There's the leaves have grown soft. And so when placed outside, often they burn and there's damage that's done because there needs to be a process of titration to move from being in mostly indoors to being outdoors.

But this is about water. And the experience of water, so you're sitting out there and you are allowed to drink with spirit provides. So if you're thirsty and you have a relationship with the clouds, with the Miyachio Yate, the cloud people, you can ask them if they will bring you water. No, interestingly for me, the two times that I've gone out to sit, it is not thirst or hunger after, you see, I used to sit out there for three to four days without food or water.

And it hasn't been those things that have been the biggest struggle for me. It has been water in the form of bathing and washing that I have missed the most, that has been actually the greatest struggle to not be able to wash my hands, to not be able to wash my body, to bathe as I often watch the birds doing. And you know, when you're out there for days on end, sometimes it occurs that the birds are mocking you.

They're flitting about their divine ability to bathe in a dew drop. And maybe there's a lesson in that as well. But again, what I was so present to is the need of, at least on this planet, of water, clean, fresh water, non-salinated water.

In most cases for us land dwellers, both Flora and Fauna, to be able to survive. Water is life, many were shown, water is life. And like I said, because of this life-giving property, that when we are denied fresh, clean water, we die. Plants die. Crops do not come to fruition. And when there's too much of it, also, it washes away. It erodes. Water is the one element that we know that moves mountains.

So why is it that we worship some disembodied, non-planetary entity when it strikes me that the real God is water? Just thoughts, thoughts. Thoughts connected to the concept of the living water, connected to the women who prayed for water and got it. Thoughts connected to the watering of this garden, figuratively, and quite literally.

As I sit out here on this unseasonally, gorgeous day in Ocean Beach, San Francisco, and contemplate my good fortune. And the not good fortune that brings about this lovely, late spring, sunny day, when it should be the onset of June gloom. Now, I'm a lucky recipient of climate change, but I know in my heart, the unfortunate nature that brings about this beautiful day. Hmm, thinking about the flows of climate and water on our planet, and how valuable this divine being is.

So I'll leave you with that.

To me, water is God. What about you?

What do you think about water?

And it's mundane presence in our lives. Maybe it's divine presence in our lives.