Remembering the Sacred Wisdom of Rivers

We trace a lifetime of river encounters that move from awe and blessing to grief and responsibility, asking what it means to relate to water as something alive. Along the way, we follow sacred springs, mother rivers, rapids, floods, and legal rights to explore whether rivers can help us remember who we are. 

 
• Opening question about what rivers teach us about being human  
• Rivers as feminine presence, mother waters, and living mystery  
• Lourdes spring story and a childhood ritual of protection  
• Mekong River as lifeblood for communities and prayer  
• Festival of Lights memory and gratitude for the Mother of Water  
• Pollution, dams, and the strain of human ambition on sacred waters  
• New River rapids story and the experience of letting go  
• Pollenskill River as a place to grieve, confess, and surrender  
• Hurricane Irene, the floodplain lesson, and neighbors coming together  
• Rights of nature, enforcement challenges, and why a river is not a corporation  
• Thomas Berry, the technozoic path, and the Ecozoic possibility  


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Transcript

What Rivers Teach Us

SPEAKER_00 0:07

What can rivers teach us about being human? Welcome to Wise Woman Stories. I'm your host, Delia Quigley. You know, in my lifetime, I've witnessed a lot of things. But what has touched me the most is watching rivers dry up and pipelines pollute sacred waters. I've lived through cancer clusters and watched the decline of the Colorado River. I've experienced the effects and the consequences of climate change. But what I really want to talk about in this episode is my relationship with the Lady of the Sacred Rivers. Some cultures name the rivers or the springs from which they arise after a goddess. And to me, the river, sensuous and smooth, turbulent and unpredictable, shrouded in morning fog or reflecting the setting sun, moves like a woman moves, nurturing the creatures within her and all the life along her banks. I've lain in her cool waters and been carried for miles, floating between earth and sky. I've braved her rapids and camped along her shore, sleeping beneath the night stars. I am always in awe of her mystery. Once I packed a canoe and paddled three days down the river with my intended. We were married on a tiny island where the river divided and flowed in two directions. The river runs through my soul and through yours. We cannot live without her. Not now, not ever. So let me ask you, what is your relationship with the river?

Dreams And The Call To Remember

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Remembering the sacred wisdom of rivers is the third episode of my series Between Earth and Sky. A series contained within Wise Woman's stories, one that explores our relationship with the living world. And in our first episode, Trees That Shaped Our Lives, we spent time among the trees and we asked what they could teach us about living a rooted life. And today we remember the sacredness of rivers. As I was preparing this episode, I had two vivid dreams about rivers. They didn't explain anything. They simply invited me to look more deeply at the stories and the legends that have been told. When I awoke, I realized that this episode was about remembering, remembering when rivers were revered as the mother waters, and also remembering my relationship with these rivers and what they've taught me along the way. I

Lourdes And A Childhood Dipping

SPEAKER_00 3:26

want to begin with a story about a sacred spring. In 1858, high in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, a young girl named Bernadette reported speaking with the Virgin Mary in a grotto near the town of Lourdes. The water from that spring soon became known throughout the world for stories of its healing powers. And to this day, pilgrims come from every corner of the globe to drink from her waters, to bathe in them, or to simply sit beside them in prayer. But the spring does not end there. Her waters flow into a mountain river that winds through southwestern France, eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean. And like every sacred spring, her gift is not meant to remain in one place. She continues her journey, carrying the sacred waters onward. My own journey began there. I must have been four, almost five, when my father, holding me in his arms, walked me into the grotto and slowly together lowered us into the water. Then we came up and out, and he took my brothers next, and one at a time he repeated the dipping. The point was to protect us, to put us under the protection of the Virgin Mary, the Divine Mother. To dip a child into such healing waters is to protect her from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as Shakespeare would say. And you would have to trust that this will hold through time. That dipping her is to join a child's soul to the energy of something divine and unnoble, to the great mystery of the feminine. My father would have been around forty at Lourdes, my mother a few years younger. They were ten years out of World War II and deep into their Catholic faith. My father had been stationed in Salzburg, Austria. They had four boys and me. They were to travel from Salzburg to France to bathe their children in the sacred waters of Lourdes. Now, here's a caveat to the story because I think it's important. Just before this, and on the journey to France, I remember we were in a very crowded train station in Salzburg. My mother insisted I hold on to her full gypsy style skirt. But as she and my brothers were boarding the train, I let go. I had seen something more interesting. So I let go of her skirt and climbed up into the train's dining car. There I made myself comfortable sitting at a table, and as we pulled out of the station, I watched the town go by, then the countryside, and then there was this beautiful flowing river. All this as the train made its way towards France. There was no one else in the dining car. On the table was a bowl of wrapped sugar cubes and no brothers to get to them first. One could surmise I'd already begun my independent wandering ways because I felt right at home, all alone, watching the countryside go by, and never a question of where my parents were. At some point the train pulled into a station and came to a stop. Time for another sugar cube. When just then my father burst into the car, frantic with worry. The relief when he saw me was palpable. As for me, I gave him my best smile and held out the sugar cube. A treat for finding me. He sat down at the table and said nothing. I just took the sugar cube from my sticky fingers, and as I pointed out the window, the train pulled out of the station. So we just sat there in silence and watched the passing scene together. After that, he wouldn't let me out of his sight. At Lourdes, as we entered the water, he held me tight in his arms. The grotto was cold, freezing, and I just had on my bathing suit. I think I remember he had on a pair of blue swimming trunks. And all these years later I can only imagine him thinking, what child could just wander off completely content to be alone? So, for extra protection, he may have dunked me a few extra times. But I swear, Mary's divine protection has held me in good stead all these many years later.

The Mekong As Mother Of Water

SPEAKER_00 8:27

There's a river that begins so high in the Tibetan plateau that reaching her source becomes a pilgrimage. First you drive as far as the mountains will allow, then you leave the car behind and continue on horseback. Eventually, even the horse can go no further. There's no hotels or restaurants, there's nothing. And you walk the final miles across rock and ice until you arrive at a spring, a spring emerging from deep within the mountain. For centuries, that spring has been regarded as sacred, and from that hidden spring begins a journey of nearly 3,000 miles. From that spring, high in the Tibetan peninsula, the Mekong River flows through six countries, through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and into Vietnam, before finally opening into the Great Delta and the South China Sea. Along every mile she nourishes life. She waters forests and rice fields, she feeds fish and birds, she carries people, creates commerce, tells stories, and answers prayers. Entire civilizations have grown beside her because she is more than a river. She is their lifeblood. And that's what a river exists to do, to nourish, to carry life, to connect one community to another. We so often think rivers exist for us, for us humans. But we've forgotten that they are first the lifeblood of the earth herself. The Mekong River is called the Mother of Water. And when I was ten years old, and my father was stationed in Bangkok, let's say my brothers were seven, eight, and eleven, when one morning my mom surprised us by keeping us home from school. We're going somewhere special, she said. Soon we found ourselves aboard a long wooden boat traveling down the Mekong River. I can still see my brother stretched out across the bow of the boat while I stood at the side, unable to look away from this amazing world unfolding for me along the riverbanks. Because this is where thousands of people lived their lives, right there, on that water. There were children splashing naked into the river, women were washing clothes, there were women paddling these narrow wooden boats selling fruits and vegetables along the banks. Families were cooking meals on docks that were situated up high on stilts above the water. Babies were being bathed, mothers were breastfeeding their children, and everywhere there was movement, everywhere there was life, and everything depended upon the flow of the Mekong Delta. The communities, the crowds of people eventually disappeared behind us, and there was nothing but jungle, thick, dense jungle around us. In what seemed like an hour or more, our boat slowed and came to a halt beside a tiny wooden dock. There was nothing around us, no sign of people or of anything, only this jungle of green, thick, and dark. Then suddenly out of the trees emerged three very small women. They wore simple black and white habits. They were nuns, and they smiled warmly as they greeted my mother with a bow. Mom stepped out of the boat and turned around and gave us a look that said, You kids stay in the boat. Don't even think about getting out. And we knew that look, and she knew us well enough that we would disappear into that jungle the moment her back was turned. You know, only years later did I understand why she had come all this way. Because knowing my mom, we had traveled all that way down the river simply to place a financial gift directly into their hands. I know she didn't trust that any envelope was going to travel through the mail and arrive to this remote jungle place safely. When we left, the sisters bowed with quiet gratitude and blessed our journey home. And after everything I had seen motoring down the Mekong, those three nuns living in the jungle was the most surprising of all. I had so many questions. I mean, who were they? Why did they live out here away from everything? It took 50 years to answer that question once I made the commitment to a spiritual practice rooted in contemplation and prayer. But that wasn't my only time with the Mother of Water. Because one evening, shortly after that journey, my mom took us to what is known as the Festival of Lights. Thousands of people had gathered along the Mekong Riverbank. Each of us received a small wooden basket holding flowers and this one single candle. Make a wish, mom told me, and she lit my candle. Then, together with thousands of other people, I leaned over the water and gently released my boat into the current. Then I stood and watched it for a long time as it had drifted away down the river and eventually into darkness, carrying a little piece of my ten-year-old self out and toward the sea. We were there to thank the mother of water. She who had nourished generations, she who had carried life down from the mountains to the sea over and over for thousands of years. Today

When Sacred Water Gets Poisoned

SPEAKER_00 15:13

I'm sad to say the Mekong carries something else. She carries forever chemicals. She carries mercury from gold mining. She still bears the napalm scars of the Vietnam War. Dams have altered her natural rhythm. Fish populations are sick and in continued decline. The sacred waters that once sustained entire civilizations now struggles beneath the weight of our human ambition. And yet, she continues to flow. She continues to nourish. She continues to carry more than water because she carries memory. She carries history. She carries every family who has depended upon her, every prayer ever entrusted to her currents. Just like every mother river in the entire world. Because despite everything we have done and continue to do, she remembers us as her children because she is the mother, the mother of the waters.

New River Rapids And A Reset

SPEAKER_00 16:50

My boyfriend at the time met me there so we could drive back together through West Virginia. Our destination was the New River. We had a thing for canoeing rivers and especially white water rafting, so we planned to stop at the New River because her rapids were legendary. And it was the perfect time of year when she was running hard and swift. It would have been in late August, moving into September. And back then it was already chilly in the north. And we arrived to the campground, settled in, showed up at the gathering place for whitewater rafting. I'd say there were about six of us and our guide. Then the guide shows up. And he's the image of a young Brad Pitt. Like in remember Brad Pitt when he was in Thelma and Louise? Oh yeah, that Brad. He looked just like that. Just adorable. And all the women were smiling. He arranged us in a large oval-shaped raft, and there was a big old red and white igloo cooler on the floor of the raft right next to me. It was stocked with soft drinks and water, some snacks for when we got to the end. We had our life vests strapped on, and a few of the gals needed help from the handsome guide to strap them on properly. A short delay, but no one seemed to mind. We each had our paddles, and once ready, our guide pushed us off from the shore, and we headed down the river. Google the new river, and you'll find that she begins high in the mountains of western North Carolina, crosses Virginia, and enters West Virginia near its southernmost tip. She manages to transect every ridge of the Alleghenies. Her name is actually a misnomer, in that it may be that she is one of the oldest rivers in the world. Yeah, let's hear that again. The new river is one of the oldest rivers in the world. And this day she was churning. Ah, what a beauty she was, moving with a rhythm and sound to her that spoke of something old and wild. In between the challenging rapids, she would stretch out long and quiet, giving you a short respite before you heard the sound of the rapids up ahead. Do you know that sound? If you've ever run the rapids, you can you can start hearing her before they ever even come into sight. And really, depending on how big the rapid is, you begin to anticipate its size and and what it can do to you if you fall out of the raft. Our guide would warn us that we've got a big one coming up, okay, we're gonna be doing this and you're gonna be doing that, and be careful with this, you be careful with that. And I was sitting towards the back of the oval-shaped raft next to the cooler, and he was on the other side of it. There was someone up in front of me to the right, to the left, and then two in the front. We'd already hit a couple of good rapids, and we're we were deep in where you get sideways, you spin around, you're coming out of that rapid, and you're so excited because you know you almost got lost in there. It's just so exciting. Really, if you haven't done it, you gotta have to. So we had a little lull, and then we could hear the sound up ahead. Our guide says, It's a big one. And I'm thinking, okay, okay, get ready for class five, and I'm so ready because this is a a survival moment when you take on the sacred river known to indigenous tribes as the river of death. I had come to have fun, to laugh, to take on or challenge, thinking she'll let me go without a slap upside the head. But this is about remembering. So let's remember that I have loved the river since I was carried into the spring at Lourdes, a form of baptism, and this river recognized me and wasn't going to let me go by without saying a proper hello. We go into that big churning rapid, and there's a moment like you get almost submerged, and then you you come out of it again, and something happened, something happened in the coming out of it that flipped me out of the raft and into the water. The big igloo cooler came out on top of me. And as I'm going down with this igloo's weight pushing me to the bottom, I'm thinking, holy shit, I just fell out. I'm in the rapid and I could drown. Somehow the cooler kept me stable as I hit the bottom, and I could lift and push it off of me. And then, you know, the river, she was something. She was like, yeah. No, this was just a kiss to say hello, Delia, and she spit me back up to the surface. I came up coughing and sputtering, just happy to be alive. The new was moving fast now, and I I had a quick thought that damn we'd lost the cooler. Eventually I caught up with the raft. I'm I'm a good swimmer. I wasn't worried or scared. I was I was actually kind of exhilarated. The raft crew were able to slow down so I could catch up and and they called out come on, get in the raft, come on. Well it was early autumn, and the air had a biting chill to it. But the water was perfect. It was warm, it was it was just delightful. I had my life vest on, I was soaking wet. So I said no, I'll just follow you down to the next rapid. And I laid back and and let the new river carry me. I remember the feeling of her, the the sense of her presence, her aliveness. It's why I call this series of episodes between earth and sky. There I was floating between earth and sky, the earth deep beneath me. And you know there's nothing like water to hold you when you're when you're just floating. It's like maybe floating in air. I was floating down the new river as if she had planned for this to happen. The sky was above me on this beautiful afternoon, blue with some clouds, and then we came to the bridge. And as I floated under that big, beautiful bridge, I felt free. I felt free of whatever weight I had carried into that trip. When I fell out of the raft and I went all the way down to the bottom holding on to that igloo, weighing me down, I let go of something I'd been carrying. I let it go. And the mother of the new river shot me right back up and out into a new life. It was an amazing moment. It was a grand moment. The new river. Thank you. And for those of you who haven't run it, I say you must.

Pollenskill As Confidante And Home

SPEAKER_00 24:27

It wasn't until later in my life that I came to live along a river. Long before then I had already fallen in love with the Pollenscale River. When times were rough, when I didn't have a way to express myself to anyone, I would drive out to my favorite place along the Pollenscale, sit out on a big rock, and watch her tumbling over the stones and around the curves, heading out to the Delaware River. I would sit and I'd talk to her, I'd tell her what was happening in my life. She carried my fears and hopes. My tears went downstream with no judgment. She just took it all. The indigenous Lenape tribe called her Mother River. But to me, she became the lady. The lady of the sacred river. Because she was alive and she was present. And she had a voice that that called out to me. It soothed my mood and and just let me leave everything there with her. Here, lady, you take it. Boom. I surrender. I surrender it to God. I surrendered to you. There's God. You, the river, alive. You remind me I'm alive, and life is just a treasure hunt until one day I will flow into the source. The Great Mother River. One day someone said I should go and look at a house for sale. I went and saw it was right across a narrow country road from the Pollenskill. I knew it was my it was my house. It was meant for me. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and stood in the window of that 150-year-old house and looked out to see the river winding around the bend, curving towards the Delaware. Standing there, I suddenly felt a presence. I wondered later if it was the spirit of the original farmer. He was standing at my shoulder. And in my mind I heard him say, We built this house here because you can see the river, and it's high enough to be out of the floodplain. The floodplain? What floodplain? No one mentioned a floodplain. But I bought the house. I fixed it up. I lived there, and I'd walk by that river every day, season after season, year after year. My pups came to live with me there, and my cat Tessa got tossed out of a passing car and showed up one winter's day on my doorstep. My neighbor Johnny was a riverman, and my other neighbors all had tributaries running from the Spring Lake, cutting through all our properties to eventually join the Pollenskill. And

Hurricane Irene And The Floodplain

SPEAKER_00 27:41

then one day, Hurricane Irene came to visit. She battered us. The state of New Jersey took a beating. And even though I was a good distance from the ocean, she found us. She took down our trees and filled the Pollenskill River with her fury. And that's how I learned about the floodplain. My house sat on the corner of two country roads, and the water came up and the river rose and it closes off from everything. The lake feeding the tributaries churned down through the tunnels and around to the roads, and by morning there was no way out. Then I remembered the voice saying how they had built the house up on this small incline out of the floodplain. And there I was, lifted away from the flood, and no water leaking even into the basement. What I loved was how it brought my neighbors together. We'd all gather out in front of my house discussing how the hell we were going to get out to get any groceries. Because it was just too deep to drive out. We'd have to hike. Hike the trail, the Pollenskill trail. That was our only way out, and our only way in. But you know, in a way, it was lovely. It was lovely to have this time where the river forced you to be separate from everything. Everything going out there in the world. You couldn't get out, nobody could get in. The power was out, and it was October. I had just stocked my wood pile and kept the wood stove burning. I ran the generator in the morning so my neighbors could come by for a shower. My gas oven kept the meals coming and the pups loved running to the edge of the water to watch it slowly recede day by day. It lasted well over a week, maybe more. You know, it felt as if the lady of the river came up and circled me and said, just rest now. Take some time off. I'll keep you safe. And she did. It was a wonderful time to be caught in her embrace. Yeah, a few minor inconveniences, but she wasn't a threat to me, never was. She's just doing her thing, being a river, being nature, being water, being the pollen skill. My river, the lady of the sacred waters, who the Lenape tribe called Mother River, and who I had the privilege to live beside.

Rights Of Rivers And The Ecozoic Choice

SPEAKER_00 30:36

For years now, countries around the world have begun recognizing something our ancestors once knew. Rivers, forests, lakes, and even entire ecosystems are being granted legal rights, the right to exist, the right to flow, to regenerate, to remain free from pollution. These were rights once reserved only for people and later for corporations. And they are now being extended to the living world. The challenge, of course, is enforcement. How do we hold accountable those who poison the very waters upon which all life depends? How do we ask a legal system built largely to protect ownership and profit to defend something whose greatest value cannot be measured on a balance sheet? I suggest the answer begins by remembering, remembering the difference between what is alive and what is not. A corporation exists on paper. A river exists in relationship with nature and with us. A corporation has shareholders. A river has fish, birds, insects, trees, children who play along its banks, communities that drink from it, and generations yet to be born. A river is alive. A corporation is not. The geologian Thomas Berry believed we are living at a tipping point in human history. One path leads deeper into our present technozoic era, a world that measures success by extraction, consumption, and control. The other path leads toward what he called the Ecozoic era, a time when humanity learns once again how to live as a respectful member of Earth's community. The tipping point is not only about climate change, it's about the awakening of our human consciousness. It is about whether we can remember that we are all dependent on this living earth. Is the question we need to ask, can we save the rivers? When the deeper question could be, can the sacred wisdom of rivers help us remember who we are? If we let them, then perhaps there's still time. You've been listening to wise women's stories. I'm your host, Delia Quigley. Until next time, you're going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit