How are River Blessings relevant to the Rights of Nature movement?

with Dr Andrew Rumsey Bishop of Ramsbury in river Marden

In this article I explore the relevance of river blessing ceremonies to the Rights of Rivers. The article draws upon my personal experience and places it in the context of the global - and UK - wide movement to acknowledge the rights and personhood of rivers. This movement is underpinned by a shift in consciousness from human-centric attitudes to ecocentric sustainability.

My journey with River Blessings started in March 2023 at Equinox in Calne when Robert MacNaughton invited me and the Bishop of Ramsbury to create a blessing ceremony for river Marden. It was a joyful day with Japanese drummers, children’s activities, the presence of the mayor and other dignitaries and many locals to celebrate the great work being done to protect river Marden.

The experience of spontaneously creating a ceremony with Dr Andrew Rumsey, who is a folk musician as well as a bishop, was profound. We walk different spiritual paths and yet we were at one with the waters flowing through Calne and our collaboration unfolded organically. Children as well as adults loved adding flowers to the nature offering which was then cast upon the water as Andrew spoke and sang words of blessing.

This event spring boarded regular river blessings held every six weeks at the Celtic festivals at various places around the south west – Didmarton, Glastonbury, Bath, Stroud, Malmesbury, Bruton, Avebury. At all of these events we have a vibrant mix of people – Mayors, councillors, MPs, scientists, activists, artists, ecologists, Druid, Christian, Buddhist, Sufi, Hindu, householders, children and so on. All faiths and none are welcome. People with different beliefs along the political spectrum have always been welcome and despite our different paths and outlook we have come together to express our love and concern for our rivers. The ceremonies vary in structure and content in response to the body of water and the bio-region we are connecting with. They are always reverent, uplifting, moving, deeply connecting and bring participants into a deeper experience of river as sentient being, much more than just a commodity to be used and extracted from.

We come together through our innate connection with water at a time when our rivers here in the UK are dying. In the words of Robert Macfarlane (author of ‘Is A River Alive?), we are living in a time of crisis in nature and crisis in imagination. These river blessings are a place for all to come and commune with water, to engage the imagination and experience river as sentient being.

When we congregate in ceremony with river we give ourselves the opportunity to drop a lot of what disconnects us from each other; from nature; and from river as entity with rights equal to human. We start to understand ourselves and each other in relationship with water who connects us all. We are bound to each other and to all other beings through our dependency upon clean-flowing rivers. Towns and cities all over the world and all over the UK have grown up around water sources, often rivers. Human settlement has forever been dependent upon a source of fresh water. We live in the catchment areas of our local rivers – springs bubble up and flow down into rivers, in mountainous regions glacial melts form streams which flow down to rivers, rainfall fills aquifers and maintains springs, wells and rivers. All of this passage of water below and across the landscape feeds all of the local flora and fauna in the wider biome as well as in the rivers themselves.

Historically rivers have been extracted from and diverted to power industry, now they are being polluted by water companies, industry and agriculture. Going back just 1,000 years our ancestors venerated water. Rivers were associated with Goddesses, wells with Celtic saints, springs with fairy folk. All revered by humans who left offerings of gratitude.

Water is 12 billion years old, far older than earth and emerged from the outer reaches of space at the dying of the first stars. 4.6 billion years ago earth was born out of the 3rd generation of stars and 4.4 billion years ago water arrived here as icy comets which melted and created our oceans. With her paradoxical nature of fluidity and stability she birthed life. Inventive, diverse life. And these 12 billion year old water molecules hold all the memory of all that’s ever been here on earth. We drink the same water as the dinosaurs did.

And here we are in a moment of polycrisis. There are many facets which we need to address if we are to come back into right relationship with all that is, and our guardianship and care for water is pivotal. Nothing less than change in consciousness from being human-centric to ecocentric is required of us. How we do this requires courage and commitment from all of us at all levels of society in all walks of life. We can learn much from our Indigenous brothers and sisters who know how to live in harmony with nature because they never left the garden. At this critical time we need to listen deeply to them as they remind us about what our priorities should be. As we shed old identities bound up with old ways of thinking and being we become more able to listen to our original ancestor: water whose qualities of fluidity, stability, inventiveness and diversity have so much to teach us.

After two and a half years of doing River Blessings my relationship with water has deepened in ways I could not have foreseen and she has brought much wisdom, solace, pain relief, joy, upliftment, cleansing, grounding, healing and she has fired my imagination while bringing me into contact with very different people. There is the potential when we come together to offer our gratitude to water that our capacity for inclusion is as limitless as our imaginations could be.

The immense and humbling presence of water dwarfs our differences. Into our water-connecting circles it is conceivable that polarities could co-exist in communion: the most vulnerable seeking safe harbour on our shores as they escape the ravages of war and climate change; the holders of the keys to power in our society; those on this land who feel disenfranchised by the powers that be. Water makes no distinction as she carries us into life and sustains us. There is infinitesimal wisdom which stirs from her depths to which we must pay heed.

As River Blessings continue I am now motivated to work closer to home in projects with others to save the Severn Bore (with Sacred Severn) and declare the Rights of River Frome (with Parents for Future and the local community) here in Stroud. In line with other river groups around the UK, we are taking a three-pronged approach to guardianship of rivers: practical (citizen's science to monitor health, pollution and bio-diversity, litter picking, local environment agency initiatives ); legal (developing a charter for the rights of rivers and presenting them to the council to ratify); sacred: pilgrimage from source to Severn to listen to what river Frome wants and a community-led development of the rights to be presented to the council at a family-friendly celebratory event with river blessing ceremony.