The View From Here
By Rev. Cynthia Riggin, Minister of Congregational Life
Repetition. It’s one of the ways the Holy Spirit seeks my attention. How about you? As I continue with the spiritual practice of “paying prayerful attention in the present moment to God’s abundant life,” I’m noticing and experiencing our interconnectedness and interdependence. Connections to family and friends, our faith community, interdependence with all the creatures in this beautiful green spring. It reminds me of the Zulu philosophy called Ubuntu that says, “My humanity is tied to yours.” “I am because you are. You are because I am.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained it this way: “Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness…We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. I cannot be without you.”
The water we bless in our Baptisms in Sunday worship encourages us to re-member this interconnectedness. Creator God, before the earth had shape and form, Your Spirit moved through the universe. Out of stardust, You formed this planet and brought forth water to sustain all life. In the time of Moses, your people passed through the waters of the Red Sea and into the freedom of the promised land. In time, you sent Jesus Christ who was nurtured in the water of Mary’s womb, baptized by John at the River Jordan and became living water to the woman at the Samaritan well. Jesus washed the feet of the disciples and sent them forth to baptize with water and the Holy Spirit. Bless this water, Holy God, which began its journey at the headwaters of the Mississippi river, then watered wild rice, corn, and soybeans, before carving cliffs of yellow sandstone on its journey to Bdote, the birth place of creation. Water is life.
To practice re-membering our interconnectedness, Church you are invited this spring and summer to collect water from your travels, whether it be your favorite MN lake, the Indian Ocean, the pool in your neighborhood, or the water from your kitchen faucet (staycations count, too) and bring that water to worship with you September 8. We’ll pour our water into a large glass container to re-member our interconnectedness to each other and our mother earth. We’ll then boil the water and save it to be used for future baptisms.