Maude Barlow came to Guelph Last Night

Maude Barlow came to Guelph Last Night to deliver a sermon in the Norfolk Street United Church, the message was Living Water and the victories of commoners around the globe in retaining or regaining their wetland stewardship, their access to free clean water, the driving back of the Nestle-Mammonites and the Coke-Pepsi Bablyon/Assyrian codes of corporate water taking throughout the Third, Second and First Worlds, Water Warriors with Water Keepers waging peace against mercenary Water Hunters, communities struggling to remain indigenous, local rites of spiritual passage since time immemorial made in the presence of ancient waters denied, people around the world, having enough. Maud Barlow in Guelph last night testifying of water battlers uniting over water, overthrowing armed fortress water-corps security forces through public pressure, defeating gun-toting compound guards at the places where the waters were stolen by Law and reclaimed by the grace of Living Water, darkness repudiated.

Communities are rising around the globe to defend water after hunted-down springs passed into the hands of water extraction profiteers courtesy of government charters, privateers draining ancient commons, the threat of violence growing in places, easing in others, the time of deciding arriving, the separating of the sheep from the goats, the choice to either live how the Waters would have us live, or die in our own waste, wrack and ruin, that choice upon us, the battle of the Age in which we live here among us being fought over water.
Maud Barlow in Guelph last night exhorted us to become new creatures in a new creation, or remain beings doomed to the fate of our own making.
The Good News for the congregation in Guelph last night is that the Living Waters will not lose, and can not fail, we will steward Eden back into being, Justice will flow like the river Isaiah prophesied, fed "like a spring whose waters never fail." (58:11) Though Maud said that differently.

The second reading I have chosen to give alongside Maude Barlow's sermon in Norfolk United Church,I chose in memory of the sun through the stain-glass windows before dusk last evening; the way the rays glowed living colour through the gothic stone windows onto the wall above the plaque that honours the dead of the Great War...

My third reading is

The man brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple flowing east. The water rose also out from the south threshold, and past the north gate and to the outer gate where the waters also poured out of the doors, and where the man said, Son of Man, this water flows fresh to the sea, where the river enters... everything will live.

Ezekiel 47...


My Homily

We are upon the crossroads where the deals are done,
daughters and sons,
the choice is ours to choose
as we please,
between the Devil or the Deep Blue Seas.