How many of you have played Chutes and Ladders or Snakes and Ladders? It is a game with a moving forward and being sent back mechanic, a game of pure chance and no strategy. It originated from the Indian game called Gyan Chauper, which is over three thousand years old.
This an invitation to question the colonizer thinking that lives inside all of us, to say that manifest destiny must stop, to find the connections in our history and relationships and build forward with respect. We know too well that we cannot change the past, but we need not repeat it.
When we look at maps, borders divide us, but water connects us. Water creates communities, economies, families.
The poem and reading opened our 2023 Ingathering service with a water ritual.
HI!
