Becoming Water

paternoster (noun) 1. (in the Roman Catholic Church) the Lord's Prayer, especially in Latin

Paternoster lakes occur in a series down a formerly glaciated valley in small basins scooped out by the glacier as it retreated. The name suggests a similarity to beads on a rosary, and the lakes are often connected to one another by streams that run between them and down the valley. -National Park Service

Painted prayers (The Lilies How They Grow) have been linked together by daily prayers for a life aligned with openness, love, and joy. On July 26, 2018, as an enactment of this continual prayer, I swam the chain of paternoster lakes and waterways that make up the Grinnell Glacier Complex in Glacier National Park. I prayed my way from the life-sustaining headwaters of the North American continent to the bottom of the valley, moving along the course one lake, one stroke, one moment of simply being carried at a time. I wanted to be inside the beads, and the thread lacing them together. I wanted to be the water—to open up a space for my prayers and the prayers of others by becoming the rosary in the landscape itself.

To read more about this prayer, please visit Becoming Water.

 All of my love and gratitude to Jaimey Hamilton-Faris and Elizabeth Elliott for imagining and realizing this prayer with me.