Let us bless the grace of water:

Flowing crystal clear and free through delighted emptiness…

A ceaseless traverse of presence…

Sounding out its journey, raising up buried music

Where the silence of time becomes almost audible…

Let us bless the humility of water, always willing to take the shape

Of whatever otherness holds it…

~Edited and adapted excerpts from IN PRAISE OF WATER

by John O’Donohue-Irish poet, philosopher, and scholar

The Celts reverenced God in all that had life and in what He gave mankind to sustain life.  They understood that God speaks to man not only through the Bible but also through Creation.  One comes into awareness of such when in Genesis he/she finds that Creation is rooted in “the waters of God’s” very being for when the Ancient of Days separated the waters, it gave mankind the soil of the ground in which to grow and nourish vegetation needed for survival and continuance. When I read those opening pages of the Bible’s first book, I often imagine the four elements–earth, wind, fire, and water swirling about in a great maelstrom, and out of that chaotic wildness Yahweh’s mighty hands plucking and putting in place everything needed to birth Creation.

J. Philip Newell tells us one of his books that “the early Celtic church was characterized by patterns of worship under the open skies.”  Evidence of this, he says, can be seen in the “Celtic monastic communities” that “dotted the coastlines of Ireland and Britain” where “earth, sea, and sky, rather than enclosed sanctuaries, were the temple of God.”  For the same reason I’m always eager to get back out into my garden.  In my small piece of Eden I feel very close to God.  Therein I find such comfort and peace as I cherish the beauty, reverence His presence, and try to grasp His mystery.  Whenever and wherever rain falls may the power and presence of God be evident in the “grace of water.”

I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit.  ~Leviticus 26:4  (NIV)   ✝