A water meditation, to be read slowly to oneself, in the same way water flows and falls.
“The highest good is like water,” whispers chapter eight of the Tao Te Ching. Jump in a pool or lake on a summer day, or take a hot shower after working up a sweat, and who would disagree? Whisky, brandy and other distilled spirits have variously been called aqua vitae, “water of life.” And “whiskey-bey” or uisce beatha, the Gaelic for whisky, is literally “water of life.” St. Patrick reportedly used the term aqua vitae both for alcohol and the waters of baptism. Jesus baptized with water (and — with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost — with fire: with both masculine and feminine elements). The Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the deep in the Biblical account of creation in Genesis, as if water were there all along, part of the primal substance God found on hand, in the dark, and used to create everything else. Water the divine unconscious, adapting to whatever form it finds. All things turn toward water.
“The highest good is like water.” Water itself says this, if I listen. Splash of the ocean’s tide, fall of water in a cascade or fountain. “Earth my body, water my blood,” goes the Pagan chant. It’s in us, of us — we’re of it. The human body is mostly water, we hear from many quarters. Hydrate!! We answer to what we’re made from, the amniotic fluids that bathe and nourish the growing fetus. The womb shelters a pool, a miniature sea. The Great Mother, Stella Maris, Star of the Sea.
Medieval magicians called water a “creature,” a created being, and the personification of water in the figure of the undine puts a face to the endlessly changing aspect that water wears. To be a water druid is first to listen to water. I never learned to swim till I reached my twenties, and a recurring dream throughout my childhood of falling into water and drowning left me with fear of heights over water. (Heights by themselves, though, are no problem for me.) There was my path through and to water. I listened, though part of the act was listening to fear. But that got my attention like nothing else could, so I count it useful. I strive to listen wider.
“Water benefits all beings without contending with them, and flows to the lowest places men disdain. In this manner it approaches the Way.” Tao, the way that water flows. “dao ke dao fei chang dao”: the way that can be followed as a way isn’t the way the way goes, to “English” it rather clumsily. Water flows, following its nature without thinking about it.
I don’t need to look any further for a sacrament, a way to make things sacred. Drinking, bathing, being born is worshiping, Attention, intention, makes the offering. The words of the old Anglican wedding vow “With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship” get it right. If we want to worship, we can begin with the body, with the waters ringing our planet and flowing in our blood. We don’t need to disdain the body because it’s “only” flesh, but celebrate it. To be alive is a holy act. The elements help us remember this, signify it, and make it so. Thus sings the Water Druid.
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Images: waterfall; Mei Yang Selvage‘s remarkable painting of the character “tao” or dao, with the final elonngated bottom stroke forming the boat the man poles.
A Druid Way 