Our Lady of the Waters

 

Smichat Torah and Shemini Atzeret marked the third week after Mabon. The truth is this is a season that takes a little help. It is the season of gratitude and goodbye and this has been the strangesr of years. I have set a task for myself every year now, that I get to the beach to visit Lake Michigan four time. For me, /lake Michigan is the Lady of the Waters, Lake Michigan is her holy temple, but the journeying has wlays been time consuming. This year has made it more so,. When there were not restrictions on trains, there were closed beaches and when the beaches weren;t closed, then the weather was inclimate. The promised warm autumn had not come and the days grow shorter.  

But Tuesday saw me and a best friend on the water. I had told her that I badly wanted to go and she surprised me with. Here we gathered up the sacred water to take back, watched the sun set and placed our feet in the cold waves. This late in October, this far north, where would be no emersing ourselves in those waters. It was perfect, really. We had come to those waters, but possibly for the last time that year, and at that moment, as day turned to night we were saying goodbyes and remembering that those waters could not be the same waters they had been for us at summers height.

Not that my time with the Lady of the Water's, or at her Temple was long, not that I went as many times as I wished or that every time was a grand one, but now, as the water turns could and we take the water we have gathered and prepar to not see this lake for several months, i think of the hot sand and the teenagers having thier first big summer, the little memories to treasure from the time gone by. 

On Shemini Atzeret we pray for the rain and on Simchat Torah we rejoice in that Word, but now, at this quiet time, re remember, we honor and we revere the one called by many names including Mami Wata and Yemaya, the Mother of Fishes, Misshigami, Our Lady of the Sea. Look upon us in our sadness, our happy moods which sink to naught, our false hopes, our struggles, our sufferings. Be for us a guiding star on the sea of life. Be for us a refreshing spring which makes of us in turn, refreshing springs also.