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Music
Drop, drop, slow tears 鈥� Gibbons (verse 1)

Rachel Mann
Good morning and welcome. I鈥檓 Canon Rachel Mann. This is a service about perhaps the most crucial element on this planet 鈥搘ater. We shall explore water as a basic need for life and water as a symbol of our deepest religious and human longings.

Reading
To a Water God 鈥� Rachel Mann

Rachel Mann
Crucially, at the start of COP26 鈥� the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow 鈥� this is a service about what water means and why it matters to real human beings in a time of climate crisis. In addition to readings, prayers and poetry, and as well as music specially recorded by KANTOS chamber choir in Victoria Baths Manchester, we shall hear some voices from the Global Majority world; voices of people facing the harshest effects generated by the profligacy of the few. This is a service which wants to speak into the environmental crisis by reminding us that everyone 鈥� of faith or none, of whatever tradition and background 鈥� is utterly lost without water. Together we shall give thanks for the gift of the water of life; we shall lament over humanity鈥檚 ruinous genius for polluting those waters; and we shall long and dream and seek after the promise of God鈥檚 new creation. We shall, like Jesus, cry 鈥業 thirst鈥� in longing for the abundance of the river of life to refresh all.

Music
Drop, drop, slow tears 鈥� Gibbons (verse 1)

Reading
Drop, drop, slow tears 鈥� Phineas Fletcher

Music
Drop, drop, slow tears 鈥� Gibbons (verse 3)

Rachel Mann
God of life, whose Spirit
hovered over the waters of creation,
out of your abundance
you provide all we need to flourish;
by your grace, may we be holy and hopeful
stewards of all with which you have entrusted to us.
Through Jesus, the Living Word. Amen.

Music
Water Night 鈥� Eric Whitacre听

Reading
Genesis 1:1-5

Rachel Mann
In the Bible, we hear how on the very first day of creation, God鈥檚 Spirit swept over the face of the waters. Water was, for the writers of the Bible, part of the essence of creation, there from the very beginning. One does not need to believe in a literal six-day creation to know that without water we and all earth are lost. The human body itself comprises nearly sixty percent water. Our bodies, as they grow in the womb, are formed in the medium of rich amniotic fluid. When a mother comes to give birth, her waters break. For all of the fearful power of oceans, seas and rivers and of that first day of creation when light and darkness were separated, we are the children of water. Water is beautiful, a wondrous gift and a symbol of life and holiness and cleanliness 鈥� and as we are realising to our horror, and in our dependence on it, through our lack of good care and our greed, water is disappearing and deserts growing; arable land is destroyed; life is dehydrating and dying. Flash floods and hurricanes wash away livelihoods. 听As 鈥�Norman Molina, Tearfund鈥檚 representative in Honduras recounts:听

Reflection
Norman Molina听

Music
Psalm 137, By the waters of Babylon - Trad. Kievan Chant

Reading
Jeremiah 4. 23-26

Rachel Mann
Father of All, as we hear those words of Jeremiah in the context of our modern world, hear the lament of your pilgrim people. In your love teach us the paths of fruitfulness and flourishing. Turn our lamenting into our dancing day, according to your mercy and grace. When your people cry out, like the writer of Lamentations,

鈥業s it nothing to you,
听听听 all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow
听听听 like my sorrow,
听which was brought upon me,鈥�

鈥� stir your world into loving action, into real and practical change that the desert may bloom and these things for which so many weep and eyes flow with tears may find a comforter. That, as the prophet Amos writes, we may 鈥榣et justice roll down like waters,听and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.鈥�

Music
Drop, drop, slow tears - Leighton

Rachel Mann
The music we hear in this service today was featured in KANTOS Chamber Choir鈥檚 recent event 鈥楧rop Drop: Thirsting For Change鈥�, a sequence of choral reflections on the coronavirus pandemic and the state of our future. It was sung in Manchester鈥檚 late Victorian, preserved, and symbolically empty, Victoria swimming baths. There was a sense of a mission surrounding their singing. A young choir almost preaching through their singing from a space which should, by rights, be full of water - to a world they are determined must listen to them.听At the recording Their leader Ellie Slorach said this:

Ellie Slorach
During the lockdowns, some people found they had more time on their hands and therefore more time to think about current issues in our society. The nature of the pandemic brought particular attention to the climate crisis. Today, in Drop Drop Thirsting for Change we create a space to think about climate change in this choral meditation, centred on themes听of Water and Thirst. 听

Throughout the performance, the choir are moving[] around the space, each piece flow[ing] seamlessly into the next. We have included numerous settings of Phineas Fletcher鈥檚 poem 鈥楧rop, drop, slow tears鈥� as well as a brand new work by Shruthi Rajasekar, 鈥楽low Tears鈥�, which is a free, aleatoric听piece commissioned for this event. There is a large element of improvisation: in fact, one piece is completely improvised around a traditional melody. Therefore, not only does the music听itself focus on Water, but the flow mirrors it too.听

Water is powerful; we cannot live without it. Yet human behaviour is making what gives us life, threaten lives: rising sea levels, droughts and flash听flooding are among the disasters we have witnessed only recently.听Of course, singing will not change any of that, but it may offer comfort, it may offer inspiration, or it may simply offer time away from worry.听 鈥楧rop, Drop鈥� Thirsting for Change.

Music
Slow Tears - Shruthi Rajasekar听

Rachel Mann
In times of crisis it is often poetry, as much as music, that we reach for. It has the power and focus to speak into grief and hope. It holds both the longings of our hearts, but in its astringent and startling use of language can also draw us into a deeper encounter with the mystery of the world. If in a time of climate crisis, we are discovering how nature鈥檚 groaning 鈥� in fire and wind and water 鈥� can shake us out of complacency, so can poems. As W.S.Mervyn suggests in his poem 鈥楩or a Coming Extinction鈥�, which imagines the last whale going to its end, if creation begins in water, it may also end in our exploitation of that resource:

Reading
For a Coming Extinction 鈥� W.S.Mervyn

Rachel Mann
Let us pray:

Gracious God, we confess our vanity as a species and our conviction that humans are not only important but more important than others. We are part of creation as much as any other species; we too are creatures of earth and water. Help us to cherish this planet of which we are part and on which we depend.

Lord hear us
Lord graciously hear us

Passionate God, we pray with and for those whose lives are washed away in storm and hurricane and flash flood. We ask for your justice and mercy to be known in this still wondrous and beautiful world.

Lord hear us
Lord graciously hear us

Loving God, at the beginning of COP26, we ask that you would call the privileged and powerful nations to account for our exploitation and mistreatment of the world. If one in the community is unsafe, then none are safe. May fresh water be abundant; may none shall go thirsty, may the desert bloom into new life.

Lord hear us
Lord graciously hear us

The Lord鈥檚 Prayer听

Music
Sicut cervus 鈥� Palestrina

Reflection
Abigail from Bukina Faso

Rachel Mann
Abigail from Burkina Fasso reminds us that in the midst of the world鈥檚 groaning and the waters of life drying up or becoming too polluted for life, there is still so much promise. Again, water is a great sign of God鈥檚 promises and love. As we hear Jesus say in John鈥檚 gospel, 鈥淟et anyone who is thirsty come to me,听and let the one who believes in me drink. As听the scripture has said, 鈥極ut of the believer鈥檚 heartshall flow rivers of living water.鈥欌�� Many faith traditions associate water with cleansing and new beginnings. In Christianity, the sacrament of baptism is a washing clean; as the new Christian steps into the waters of baptism or is dunked or sprinkled as a baby her old identity is buried with Christ and raised to a resurrected life in him. I cannot believe then that, even as we hear the chimes at midnight, all hope is lost. There is still time enough. Just. It is a question of daring to live on God鈥檚 promises. We too cry, like Jesus on the Cross, 鈥業 thirst鈥�. Like Jesus, we too can know the promise of the new life in the Garden of Resurrection. When we, as wealthy nations and a groaning planet, begin to cherish the gift of life and water, I believe we can glimpse that vision of fulfilment and hope found at the end of the Book of Revelation:

Reading
Revelation 22: 1-2听

Music
Drop, drop, slow tears 鈥� Orlando Gibbons听

Rachel Mann
Till then, as we hear in our closing poem, which comes from the Americas written by Lois Red Elk, 鈥淎ll Thirst Quenched鈥�. Our thirst however is a sign not only of longing but that things are not right. Our thirst is a stimulation to put our longing into action; to unite our desire with God鈥檚 desire for all humanity. May the waters of love flow. May we become the creatures of water and earth, of prayer and promise God calls us to be. May justice and righteousness and God鈥檚 tender blessing flow like an everlasting stream 鈥�

Reading
All Thirst Quenched - Lois Red Elk

Music
Bring me little water, Sylvie - Trad. Improv.