“With these ‘watershed eyes’ we can view the sacredness…

of water from our Creator’s perspective.”

This from the Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake’s Kolya Braun-Greiner, MDiv, Project Coordinator, Trees for Sacred Places.

Her piece in the current bulletin is so worthy that I want you to see a good share of it here (including illustration)-

Seeing with Watershed Eyes

There’s an old hymn that goes “Open my eyes, that I may see, glimpses of truth thou hast for me…, illumine me, Spirit Divine.”   My eyes have been opened wider to the deep truth of living in watershed since I started this work with IPC a year ago. With this new sight, as I drove home from our summer family vacation at Chincoteague Island, I noticed a sign that says “You are in the Patuxent Watershed.” On my carpool to my daughter’s school, I now see “Little Falls Watershed Alliance.” And in my own neighborhood, the “Friends of Sligo Creek” (in the Anacostia subwatershed) posts monthly news about preserving the creek with clean-ups, native plants, and removal of invasives along with poetry. My eyes are now seeing signs of watershed truth.

With these “watershed eyes” we can view the sacredness of water from our Creator’s perspective.  Chesapeake Bay environmental educator and artist, Tom Wisner expressed this so beautifully:

This land, these waters are graced by a grand divine presence that is evident in the way we resonate with the simplicity in our native landscape…

A watershed eyes perspective has a wide-angle view rooted in the both the other-than-human and the human community affected by our relationship to our watershed. These social justice impacts are implied by a book entitled The Web Life by preeminent ecologist John H. Storer, written in 1956. He prophetically indicated the social as well as environmental challenges to water conservation: “The best use of…water of the watershed that controls it has become a matter of life and death to [some] communities. The use and pollution, the cleansing and re-use of the water, in an effort to extend its usefulness, become matters of vital moment, demanding close cooperation between people dependent on it….”   This indeed is a “vital moment”- a watershed moment! – in which God is calling for “cooperation between people” who live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. With watershed eyes awakened to the fact we are all vitally dependent upon it, physically and spiritually, we are inspired to take action. Heightened awareness with “watershed eyes” goes beyond mere sign reading to reading the signs of the times.

“Heightened awareness with ‘watershed eyes’ goes beyond the mere sign reading to reading the signs of our times.” Take that in.

I’m a subscriber to the Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake’s Bulletin Board. Consider subscribing at this link.

If looking for more about regional watersheds, I’ve written several blog posts which you can find by entering the word watershed in the Search engine at the upper right.