PeaceBang

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1. Heh. That’s one remedy to the perennial problem of one-upsmanship and vacation envy during Water Communion. (In the beginning, according to Genesis, the breath of God moved over the face of the waters — and it’s still keeping them from getting too roiled, or so it would appear.)

   Over the summer my church rebuilt their restrooms and cleaned out some old accumulated junk from the former storage areas where the new restrooms went. Now the new commode in the men’s room has an old sign over it that reads: “Parking for Church Business Only”.

   Comment by fausto — September 9, 2007 #

2. For those of us who aren’t UUs, what’s water communion?

   Comment by Maggie — September 9, 2007 #

3. I’ve been a reader of yours, PeaceBang, for a while now, and have been waiting to wade into the discussions, pero ya que mencionaste el castellano, que me despierta el corazón….

   1. “Baño” means “bath” in the hot-spring sense as well as “bathroom.” So it’s very likely that he got it from, say, some hot springs or something. This much I’m sure you know. What I don’t know, and would like to, is whether the singular [baño] is more closely associated with el sanitario than the plural [baños]; if this is not the case then I suspect that to a native speaker of Spanish it wouldn’t necessarily produce giggling at all. Hay alguién hispanohablante de materna que puede opinar?

   2. There should be a language software setting that you can use to switch your keyboard into Spanish temporarily and find the ñ. Go to the Control Panel and look for Language settings.

   Comment by Prosopopeya — September 9, 2007 #

4. Can I get an “ew”?

   Comment by KRS — September 9, 2007 #

5. That is funny. The man would not have been able to pull that off in the Southwest District without provoking a lot of giggles. Even those of us that do not speak Spanish fluently would have recognized it. Texas, California and other parts of the US are almost bi-lingual.

   Our congregation has been grappling with the sharing of water without being elitist. I think the New England congregant is expressing some frustration that the water ceremony has turned into “What I did on my summer vacation.”

   Comment by Toonhead — September 9, 2007 #

6. Water Communion is where everyone in the congregation brings a sample of water from wherever they’ve been traveling and pours it into a common vessel. It’s supposed to symbolize ingathering, and coming together, and building something unified and greater than any one of us out of our individual diversity, and the monistic interdependent web of all existence, and just plain ooh wow, goddammit. It’s usually done in September when everyone comes back from summer vacation, and many UU churches resume a regular worship schedule after a summer hiatus. It has the additional advantage of keeping youngsters engaged in the adult service before fall Sunday School classes start.

   It has its detractors (full disclosure: self among them) not only because is it theologically pretty superficial and lame, but also because it tends to breed resentment when rich kids return with meltwater from a disappearing glacier in the Andes that will be be gone forever in five years, while kids from more modest families can only afford to bring some greenish-brownish stuff from a local pond, or maybe only something from the downstairs bano.

   Comment by fausto — September 10, 2007 #

7. My former congregation once had a crone with a slightly wicked sense of humor come up and spit into the communal vessel for the water communion. I can’t remember the story behind it–I think she’d spent the summer dealing with medical issues and so was very focused on the body.

   I also included water from that church’s bathroom in my gathering of water one year–very much on purpose, because I’d spent a lot of the summer there helping with renovations and doing planning work.

   Comment by martinet — September 10, 2007 #

8. Baño implies more than toilet or restroom. In the US and some parts of Latin America one would most often see this word used often for public restrooms, but it has other meanings as well. It sounds like he went to a spa or hot springs. The Galapagos Islands, being formed of volcanoes, and with many wealthy tourists, has a lot of both.

   To Toonhead: Maybe it would help if congregations moved water communion to another time of year - or added a water communion in another season. In this way perhaps, gradually, people would stop associating water communion with summer trips.

   Comment by h sofia — September 10, 2007 #

9. If you have windows, you can type even with a regular English keyboard ñ by holding down the Alt key while you type 0241 on the keypad.

   Comment by Mystical Seeker — September 10, 2007 #

10. Water communion and its weekly cousin, joys and concerns, give me nightmares as a lay leader at a small fellowship. Yesterday one of our less stable members stepped over the line when he shared that the significant “water” in his life was in his Foley leg bag but that he had decided that “we” would object if he literally emptied that into the common bowl. So he brought tap water to represent it instead.

    Comment by Frog Princess — September 10, 2007 #

11. Yuck, that Foley bag comment is making me gag…not a pretty picture!

    I wonder if this guy ended up doing the typical “gringo trail” trip to the Galapagos, which included a stop in the capital, Quito (well worth it, by the way…the colonial center is considered an international jewel by UNESCO) and an excusion to the nearby mountains, to the town of Los Banos…beautiful place, with sulphur springs, and I believe that a Marian apparition is alleged to have take place there.

    Comment by tom — September 11, 2007 #

12. I think that we’ve pretty well dealt with the Travelogue aspect of the water communion by announcing (all summer long) that we hope people will bring water from a place that was significant to them this summer. This allows for vacation sites, of course, but could also be the sink in their hospital room, the drinking fountain in the library, or their back yard hose.

    This year we had one woman pour in some water from a bottle of water that she keeps in her car to give to her dogs when they are thirsty (by pouring it into a dog bowl–nothing yukky about the water when it was still in the bottle). She is working hard to get a dog park in our town, and that was her focus this summer.

    Our folks are good about not being elitist with this beloved practice.

    Comment by Judy Welles — September 11, 2007 #

13. Our church is vacation-announcement central during the water ceremony. It’s in a very affluent town (myself excluded). To me, it is a stomach-turning show.

    Never mind that the participants are announcing to the whole congregation their exotic trips which no doubt cost thousands of dollars, but the ceremony also holds the elitist assumption that one must travel to be a well-rounded person. It’s fascinating to a watch a so-called bunch of open-minded, welcoming liberals flaunt their wealth.

    Maybe we should have a debt ceremony for all us “poor” folk where we burn our loan statements and ask for whatever you believe in to make them go away.

    If the church wants to keep the ceremony, fine, but there should be no more announcements. Just pour in it and remember in your heart where it came from.

    Comment by Ann — September 12, 2007 #

14. This makes me so sad. For some reason I’ve always been able to think of water communions as a blending of very disparate sources (always something to marvel at in my world), and it somehow never occurred to me to think of jealousy issues coming into play. My former congregation was somewhat varied as to family wealth, but I think I was just impressed about the fact that water from South Africa–gathered during a choir tour by a seventeen-year-old–was able to mingle with water from the church bathroom. That year I recorded the water sources and presented them to the congregation (a bottle of the water went into a church time capsule, with the list), and I was thrilled at the variety of states and nations represented; everyone else seemed to be, as well. It was the whole, not the individual parts and who brought what, that seemed to matter.

    Maybe I can just think that way because I never particularly wanted to travel and am not personally jealous of those who have the resources to do so, but I find it kind of disturbing that it’s touching so many nerves. Does the “fault” rest with those who are presenting–”flaunting”–or with those who are affected by it? A combination? What kind of maturity levels should be expected here, on both parts?

    We did try to avoid the “travelogue” aspect–less to deal with wealth disparity and more to keep the service flowing aesthetically and maintain the spiritual focus. We just requested that when folks bring up their water, they talk (BRIEFLY) about what connected them spiritually to the places they went–that seemed to work fine. (That congregation was small, though; don’t know how well time-wise that would fit into a larger one.)

    Comment by martinet — September 12, 2007 #

15. I can see at least two problems with the water communion.

    1.) It gets in the way of our (often and merely) stated commitment to socioeconomic diversity in our congregations. But the problem, I think, is not so much “jealousy.” In my own experience, people are not so much jealous as reluctant to feel out of their depth. Leaving jealousy aside, I still don’t want to give newcomers of whatever class the impression that being a world traveler is something that is *expected* of people in the congregation.

    2.) The keeping-up-with-the-Joneses attitude toward water communion seems to have focused on the poor soul who was unable to go to the baño galapageño, and how stained his poor little blue collar is going to get from all the tears.

    But I wonder if we might attack this ritual, with even more legitimacy, as unhealthy for the person who’s doing the “bragging.” Surely this is not a spiritually healthy exercise for the person doing it, no matter who else it affects, and is not the sort of thing we ought to be encouraging in church.

    Comment by Prosopopeya — September 12, 2007 #

16. I am only familiar with what I have seen in the one congregation where I have been a member. It is a congregation in an extremely affluent town with a very prestigious university to boot.

    I have also searched my soul as to why I find the vacation-announcements so disturbing. I agree, that if it is because I am simply jealous, well, that’s not cool.

    The thing is, travel is the first luxury to go when you are on a tight budget. There could very well be people in the congregation who can’t even take their kids to the beach for a couple of days. Or to take it further, have to scrimp at the grocery store each week to make ends meet.

    How does it make them feel to hear about the family who went on a tour of Asia? What I think is important is what are the “braggers” getting out of it and showing off their wealth is not the point.

    Travel is a valued part of the elite, and yes, I’ll say it, liberal culture. When you announce your trip, you are saying that you are worldly, that you are educated, that you are not provincial. I don’t think that that the ‘braggers’ are necessarily bragging about their wealth (because that wouldn’t be open-minded and liberal and welcoming), but this aspect of their identity.

    What would we as UUs say if we had a car blessing ceremony where we all brought in pictures of our cars? Or our houses, where we announced where we lived and what kind of house it was and if we owned it or not? But of course, in a UU church, it would become an announcement about your hybrid and your solar panels or how close your home was to downtown so you don’t walk anywhere anymore. Perhaps a competition of greeness…

    Comment by Ann — September 12, 2007 #

17. I always dug the water ceremony as a kid - bringing along an empty film canister to camp or to the ocean or wherever. I loved the blending of the waters, the idea that the water played an important ceremonial role in the congregation (we used it in naming ceremonies during the year). The idea that the community made this water holy, not an external authority. It seemed a true communion. But then, I didn’t live in a wealthy suburb of New England, so maybe it’s different in other places, and needs some updating.

    Couldn’t there be a way for the minister or lay-leader to read an (anonymous) list of the places the water is from, while people poured their samples in? The diverse experiences and locations could be recognized, but without the knife-twist of identifying who went to Tanzania and who went to Aunt Tanya’s.

    Comment by bluish seminarian — September 12, 2007 #

18. I’ve never liked Water Communion (and to be perfectly honest I’m not that thrilled with Flower Communion either, but that’s another story).

    Aside from all the theological issues I have with it, I just think this invites a class issue that UUs don’t need(it’s not like UUs don’t have enough class issues to deal with). If this were something done before the service, with just the pouring in of different waters(no talking), then maybe I could go for it. But I’ve yet to hear of a UU church that doesn’t make a production out of it.

    In throwing the baby out with the theological bathwater, I find it a little strange that so many UUs have an attachment to Water Communion, yet would have a big problem with a real Communion done as an entire service.

    Comment by Kim Hampton — September 13, 2007 #

19. I’m another one who thinks Water Communion needs lots of work.

    One year, when another member of the congregation had lavaged my stomach to test for an ulcer, I said that I wanted to bring that water, but it had been thrown out.

    Another year I brought Fiji Water… described the beautiful tropical mountains it came from, and then said that I’d bought it in Denver.

    But where there is strong emotion, there is hope for something better. I hope we can develop something that (almost) all of us can appreciate and enjoy.

    Comment by Charlie D — September 14, 2007 #

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