Water and Spirituality

Just returning from our 13th World Pilgrims’ journey, where we take Atlantans of various faiths outside of the U.S. to facilitate them getting to know, trust, and understand each other. It is always our hope to bring them back as friends and interfaith bridge builders within their faith communities. This time we stayed closer to home, venturing across the northern border into Canada, to enjoy the magnificent Niagara Falls and the amazing internationality of Toronto.

“And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:2

As we watched and felt the power of 6 million cubic feet of water per minute plummeting 165 feet, generating deafening sounds and saturating mists, the Falls touched our souls. It called out to each of us with undulations of our own ebbs, flows, falls, cascades, floods, mists, storms, and placidity. And why not, water is our essential essence. If all the water from our bodies were removed, nothing but a small bucket of dust would remain.

” We have created every living thing from water.” Quran 21:30

We reflected upon water as a semblance of the human soul, the inclination to seek the lowest point before rising (humility), the tendency to accept the shape of the immediate environment (contentment) while awaiting the opportunity to flow and meander (inquisitiveness), the transformation provoked by extreme heat (anger) or pressure (courage), the hoarding that sets in when one becomes cold and hardened (selfishness), and the cleansing and uplifting that comes from responding to the truth (enlightenment).

” A great state is like a river basin that receives everything flowing into it.

It is the place where all things come to rest, where all the world is welcomed.”

Tao, v. 61

In Toronto, a city of nearly 3 million people of over 100 ethnic identities, the water symbolism was personified in the ebb and flow of the immense diversity of the people, in and out of their distinct neighborhoods and communities, without any sense of alienation or irrelevance. Even our group of diverse complexions and religious attire, which really attracted attention as we moved through the Atlanta and Buffalo Airports, barely got a curious glance on the streets of Toronto. We melted into the vast sea of Torontonian diversity where hijabs, kufis, yarmulkes, robes, collars, and skins of yellows, reds, browns, blacks, and whites freely intermingle without any apparent aversion or discomfort. It’s just the established flow and amalgamation of their cultural waters.
We have returned as friends, and with a hope that the current toxic rhetoric and pollutions spewing from the American muddle of political stagnation and social stratification, is perhaps just superficial foam and froth, and if we but think clearer, work harder, relate better, care more, and believe in greater realities, then perhaps we will discover that surely even these still waters run deep.

” We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon,

and we ask that they teach us and show us the way.”

Chinook Native Blessing