WHAT WATER WANTS
OUR ANNUAL 2024 WATER CEREMONY
WHAT IS WATER CEREMONY?
Water Ceremony is a yearly ritual for many Unitarian Universalist congregations, including Foothills! Community members bring a small amount of water (often from a special place to them or from their home). During the ritual, each person pours their water into a shared vessel. The combined water symbolizes both what we each bring AND, maybe more importantly, how we are changed by our commitment to journeying together.
OUR 2024 ANNUAL WATER CEREMONY
This year’s Water Ceremony is happening on Sunday, August 11th, 2024 at 10:00 AM, both IN-PERSON & ONLINE, for the first time in our NEW
SANCTUARY SPACE!
What To Bring
A small amount of water from somewhere special to you (your home, a favorite river or reservoir, a vacation spot, rainwater, etc.) If you are attending our Zoom Water Ceremony service, please have a small vessel of water within reach during the service.
CHILDREN & FAMILIES
Water Ceremony is an all-ages ritual, and children are invited to attend the entire service and participate with their families. Childcare is available for babies and toddlers.
VOLUNTEERING
If you are able to volunteer, we would love your help! Please email Jenn Powell at jenn@foothillsuu.org if you would like to help us make this day an incredible experience for all.
THE HISTORY OF WATER CEREMONY
In 1980, two Unitarian Universalist women—Carolyn McDade and Lucile Schuck Longview—were asked to create a worship service for the Women and Religion Continental Convocation of Unitarian Universalists.
As they shaped that service, McDade and Longview wanted to create a new ritual “that spoke to our connectedness to one another, to the totality of life, and to our place on this planet.” They included a new, inclusive symbol of women’s spirituality: water.
They write,
“Water is more than simply a metaphor. It is elemental and primary, calling forth feelings of awe and reverence. Acknowledging that the ocean is considered by many to be the place from which all life on our planet came—it is the womb of life—and that amniotic waters surround each of us prenatally, we now realize that [this worship service] was for us a new story of creation… We choose water as our symbol of our empowerment.”
The November service, held in East Lansing, Michigan, was called “Coming Home Like Rivers to the Sea.” As its creators, McDade and Longview enacted their ritual in the liberating space of a semicircle around a large earthenware bowl. They asked eight different women—each coming from distant places—to bring water, and they did: water from the Rio Grande and Assiniboine Rivers, rainwater from Maryland, water from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and others were poured into the earthenware bowl as each bearer described its significance.
“As the ritual is continued,” says Carolyn McDade, “water deepens in meaning for us, just as water deepens during its long and winding journey to the sea.”
(Source: “The Original Water Communion” – many thanks to Carolyn McDade, Rev. Dr. Susan Ritchie, and Marian Shatto for their assistance in building this history herstory.)
