Where is your water from?

UU World asked: If your congregation holds a Water Communion service in the fall, where will you be bringing water from this summer and why?

Jayme Lynn Tate, of the UU Church of Joliet, Illinois, will bring water from Unicamp in Honeywood, Ontario, where Opus is being held this year: “Young adult conferences and retreats are where I feel most at home in my spirituality. The community is the loving embrace that carries me through each year of growth as a young adult.”

Diana K. McLean of Boulder Valley UU Fellowship in Lafayette, Colorado, wrote: “I will bring intermingled water from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where my son and I will visit my parents (members of First UU Congregation of Ann Arbor); Louisville, Kentucky, where my mom and son will attend General Assembly with me; and Columbus, Ohio, where we will stop on our way from Ann Arbor to Louisville for me to take the career assessment that is the next step in my journey to UU ministry.”

Karen Dau, of First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York, responded on UU World’s Facebook page: “We don’t call for where our water comes from, because it gets to be a game of one-upmanship. The minister will ask for some other criterion: something special that happened, an important learning, an inward journey.”

Anne True, of Thoreau Woods UU Church in Huntsville, Texas, says her 14-year-old son Elliot Norman emailed her from a trip to Europe to say he had waded in the Mediterranean and was bringing back some of its water for the service. “Imagine my surprise when he told me that he had picked up water for water communion,” she wrote. “He is not all that fond of church.”

Let us know your thoughts; leave a comment below.

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This article appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of UU World (page 13).