A Ritual for Watershed Blessing

A watershed is land around a river, or any water system, where “all living beings are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, humans settled…All of us live in a watershed, no matter how ignorant we may be about it….Watershed discipleship believes that only by ‘taking root downward,’ as the old prophet Isaiah put it, ‘can the surviving remnant…again bare fruit upward.” Isaiah 37:31” Ched Myers in Faithful Resistance

We honor the water protectors and the water-bearers The sacred feminine: “Every life that passes through our wombs is nurtured and developed in water; we carry the waters of life within us, making us the water-bearers of the universe.” Sherri Mitchell in Sacred Instructions

SONG: River Running in You and Me Link to Youtube

Remember a time when you were a child, and you sank your bare toes into the stream nearest your house. The clear, clean water running over your feet, the warmth of the sun. Was it a small creek perhaps, running into a larger river at some point. Did you realize that you were standing in a flow of connection that united your land? “Water is the foundation of all life, and it is fundamental to our survival….The human right to life is dependent on access to clean water.” Sherri Mitchell in Sacred Instructions

Qi Gong - the Water Element Link to Youtube video

“Praise and gratitude to the sacred waters of the world, to the oceans, the mother of life, the womb of the plant life that freshens our air with oxygen, the brew that is stirred by sunlight and the moon's gravity into the great currents and tides that move across the earth, circulating the means of life, bringing warmth to the frozen Arctic and cool, fresh winds to the tropics. We give thanks for the blessed clouds and the rain that brings the gift of life to the land, that eases the thirst of roots, that grows the trees and sustains life even in the dry desert. We give thanks for the springs that bring life-giving water up from the ground, for the small streams and creeks, for the mighty rivers. We praise the beauty of water, the sparkle of the sunlight on a blue lake, the shimmer of moonlight on the ocean's waves, the white spray of the waterfall. We take delight in the sweet singing of the dancing stream and the roar of the river in the flood.

We ask help to know within ourselves all the powers of water: to wear down and to build up, to ebb and to flow, to nurture and to destroy, to merge and to separate. We know that water has great powers of healing and cleansing, and we also know that water is vulnerable to contamination and pollution. We ask help in our work as healers, in our efforts to ensure that the waters of the world run clean and run free, that all the earth's children have the water they need to sustain abundance of life. Blessed be the water.” — Starhawk in The Earth Path

LITANY OF COMMITMENT

We commit to withdrawing our support from harming the watershed

The water is sacred, its flow connects us all

We refuse to invest in those companies that are using destructive practices