Ingathering/Water Ceremony

2025-0907—Ingathering/Water Ceremony

UCM—Rev. Rita Capezzi

One of my daily spiritual practices is to take a photo “Out My Window.” I post it on Facebook. It is a practice that I began during the pandemic, and I have now been doing this, generally but not always every morning, for 5 years and 170 days. A friend recently snarked that if I posted the same thing every day, folks were likely to just scroll on by without reading. Maybe. An acquaintance in Buffalo posts something similar. She calls it “Proof of Life.” I like that. I have been asked by two UU ministers if they could use my practice to preach to their congregations. I wonder what about. Another friend once remarked about the photos: “So much sameness.” Yes.

That’s the thing about practices: so much sameness. So much sameness you might not stop to consider all kinds of questions that can arise from practice: What is it for? Why do we do it? When does the practice slip from significance to mere habit? When does a practice slip from meaning-imbued ritual to obsession? You can ask such questions of communal practices as well as personal ones. When are we simply going through the motions of worship—regular, old, familiar Sunday worship or even special ceremonies like the Water Ceremony we enacted today. And when, on the flip side, does the repetition, the familiarity, when does the very sameness of it all take on deeper significance?

When I was a teacher of reading and writing, I regularly told the students in my charge that regardless of much of what I did or said, they would learn to write by practicing to write. Practicing: like when you keep playing the same exercises on the piano or guitar, until your hands and your eyes and your brain all work together with the mysterious notations on the paper to create sounds that delight, rather than horrify! Practicing: like when you work on your swing in pickleball or tennis, when you adjust your gait when running, when you learn the new knitting stitch or slow down enough to line up the images just so in your camera’s viewfinder. Practicing: like when you load the dishwasher or sweep so that the floor dust is actually removed or drive so that you and all those on the road with you arrive safely at the desired destination. What is outside ourselves—musical instruments or racquets and balls or sport shoes and street pavements or needles and yarn or black letters on white screens and all the rest—all that is outside ourselves becomes implicated with, entangled with, all that is inside of us, all that provides us with meaning and purpose, a sense of the goodness, the beauty, the significance of existence.

Yes, some things that we do can become simply habits. I have an occasional awareness of myself when I make the bed, that I do it in the same way every day. I feel a bit foolish about this at times. In the grand scheme of things, making my bed, even if I do it repetitiously, isn’t such a big deal. But the practices I use to remind myself that I am alive, that my life matters, that this is true of all of you and all my companions in living, those I know and those I don’t—there is nothing foolish or simply habitual about them.

We live in a world, dear ones, we live in times, when the world around us would tell us that we are little more than consumers, that our job is to purchase the products which the market has to sell us, that these products are what convey meaning and purpose to your living. We live in a world, we live in times that tell us that we have little effectivity, that forces beyond us control how we live, especially how we should relate to each other. There are forces that would divide us, that would have us judge and hate each other, have us believe that we are inherent threats to each other if we don’t speak the same languages or worship in the same ways or eat the same kinds of foods or view the world in the same ways. We live in a world that keeps us wanting while confronting us with the plenitude of breakfast cereal and toothpaste and running shoe choices. We live also in a world where I have choice and too many do not, a world where I am encouraged to hoard my ability to choose over the basic needs of some very many, in our very own neighborhoods and countries, and across the entire world. Some of us weep. Some of us pray. The waters of life are, indeed, troubled.

And yet, here we are, together, aware of this world we live in, slightly or deeply “off”—not making sense, not right, not good—here we are, on this Sunday morning, cracked pots all of us, making our way together, deciding in some fashion that the spiritual practice of common worship, with familiar words and rhythms, that the ritual of Water Ceremony, has importance. That it is meaningful, and beyond mere habit. Our choice to be here, Unitarian Universalists shaping worth together—that is all that the word “worship” need mean, to shape worth—our decision to show up and make this spectacle again, this is a practice. This is a practice to remind us of what we value. This is a practice to remind us that while life might be fraught, sad, scary, difficult, living is a mysterious gift. This is, here and now, a practice that thriving is a choice, that leaning into our shared values, leaning on each other, is a ritual worth doing.

In the spring, Flower Ceremony reminds us all of our unique being, how we each bring beauty and diverse splendor to our common life here at the Congregation. As we ingather, as we participate in the ritual of the Water Ceremony, we are reminded of our common being and our common destiny. We are reminded—just as individual droplets of water can merge together to make a flood, cause a river to jump its banks, conspire with seeds to create a garden—together, we help each other hold on, to live differently,  in a world of challenge and heartbreak. Together we ride the waves. Together, we make waves of beauty and abundance to swamp the trash of hatred and cleanse away evil-mindedness.

You are here. Because you are here, you belong, worthy as you are, beloved as you are. And because you are here now, each and all participants in the co-creation of a ritual of common good and abundance, you have engaged, intentionally or not, in a uniquely Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice. May you embrace your participation with intention, feeling who significant it could be to you, how significant it truly is for all of us and the beautiful continuity of this Congregation. May you feel it so, and Amen.

Rev. Rita Capezzi