Thursday

Water of Life, Darkening Gulf, Part 1 Water

Cats Eye

WATER

By Bill Scheffel

In 2004 I began a mode of life that is still occurring, one of travel (a mode which occurs even if travel is only to the mailbox) and one in which I felt I was becoming the “experiment of my own art.” Beginning that year I had the privilege to travel internationally and it was always bodies of water that most attracted me: the River Arno; the Bosporus, the Mekong.

Without necessarily intending to, I returned home with a far greater appreciation of water, so much so that I could barely stand to “waste” it and for a while carried my dish water to the garden rather than letting it simply go down the drain.

In 2007 I read the book Water Wars by Vandana Shiva. In the preface I discovered this poem, which I committed to memory and have recited aloud nearly every morning since then:

WATER OF LIFE

Waters, you are the ones that bring us the life force.
Help us to find nourishment,
So we may look upon great joy.
Let us share in the most delicious sap you have,
As if you are loving mothers,
Let us go straight to the house of the one,
For whom you waters give us life and give us birth.
For our well-being, let the goddesses be an aid to us,
Let the waters be for us to drink.
Let them cause well-being and health to flow over us.
Mistresses of all the things that are chosen,
Rulers over all peoples,
The waters are the ones I beg for a cure.
Waters – yield your cure as an armor for my body,
So I may look upon the sun for a long time.
Waters – carry away all of this that has gone bad in me.
Either that I have done in malicious deceit,
Or whatever lie I have sworn to,
I hear sort the waters today.
We have joined with their sap,
Oh Agni, full of moisture,
Come and flood me with splendor!
The Ancient Rig Veda Hymn, Water of Life

———————————–
In the fall of 2008, when I was completing my film, Denise: Circle of Blessing I took
footage of water near my home, not simply as B-roll shots (which I never ended up
using anyway) but as a form of healing; my mother had died in April and a month
later I began to film the last three months of Denise Thornton’s life. I edited the
footage into a three-minute film that I narrated with the title, Water of Life.

Read more by Bill Scheffel on http://dralaprinciple.blogspot.com/