I was reflecting on our meaningful September In-Gathering of Waters or ‘Water Communion,’ and also recalling my mid-September trip escorting our April auction winners on a guided tour of the historic Wakamatsu pioneer Japanese tea and silk colony near where I live in the riverside gold rush town of Coloma. Pouring my bottle of south fork American River water into our communal vase reminded me of a healing ceremony led by visiting Tibetan Buddhist monks several years ago.

These monks of the Gaden Shartse monastery in India tour the American west regularly, and usually when they visit they make a stunning and spiritually significant sand painting / mandala that takes several days of intense work. Traditionally that colored sand is prayerfully brushed up, collected, and placed in a body of water for healing and blessing of the area. That year I joined those monks and an interfaith group of local ministers, a rabbi, and Native Miwok / Maidu elders to experience their ceremony. Knowing that local Native American tribes — and the Japanese colonists — encountered prejudice, intolerance, illness, death, and loss of land along this beautiful south fork of the American River in the mid nineteenth century, these monks led us in chants and prayers accompanied by cymbals, and poured their rainbow colored sand into the rushing eddies, bringing some acknowledgement of much suffering in our little community’s past, and perhaps a bit of reconciliation.

I was further moved when I searched the internet for an accompanying photo for my article. (I couldn’t find my original pictures, which were prints from film!) It turns out that on their most recent visit, by invitation, they brought their holy sand and water to the burnt-out ruins of Paradise, perhaps bringing a ‘spirit of life’ and some hope and healing to our suffering neighbors up north as well. Perhaps soon they can bring their spiritual arts and Buddhist compassion to UUSS and our nearby Sacramento River!