The Season of Creation is a beautiful reason to celebrate God as Creator and to reflect on the truth that Creation is a gift—not a resource to exploit or abuse. It invites us to renew our relationship with Creation, striving to be stewards, caregivers, and healers. This week’s reflections invite us to consider both how we can continue to be faithful servants and the role of prayer in deepening our relationship with the Spirit.
Reflection 1 — Becoming
“Mother, today I sat inside the river and let the water name me, not with words, but with erosion, the slowest kind of touch. A pebble isn’t born smooth; it gets that way from staying. Once, I thought softness was a kind of failure. Now I know it is what remains after all the sharpness has been loved away. The current does not ask me to change; it asks me to stay and keep becoming.”
Question for Reflection or Sharing: Where in your life are you being invited to stay, soften, and keep becoming?
(Reproduced from the Season of Creation “2026 Celebration Guide”; Original source: Tendrils; Ecopoetics of community and justice published by Spiral House, 2026)
“Before landscapes die, they first vanish in the imagination.”
Bhavani Raman
Reflection 2 — Teresa of Avila’s Teaching on Prayer: The Image of Water
Reproduced with permission from the Dominican Center Marywood at Aquinas College
“Teresa sees that the garden can be watered in four ways:
FIRST she says: “You may draw water from a well.” If the well is deep, it is hard work and tiring.”
The SECOND method is by a water wheel made with small tilting buckets attached on the rim. As the wheel rotates, the buckets in turn fill with water then are carried around until the buckets then tilt again and empty into a channel or reservoir.
The THIRD method is to tap the water from a stream where there is plenty in supply. It can easily be distributed throughout the garden in a controlled way without too much labor of the gardener.
The FOURTH way, the simplest and most effective, is to use the rainfall. “The Lord waters the garden without any work on our part.” Here God freely empowers the soul through the gift of prayer.
Gardening involves hard work, first in conditioning ourselves. Teresa recognizes that most of us are easily distracted and tire ourselves in trying to control our feelings and senses. She says we are to recollect constantly on the purpose of our labors and of the owner of the garden, the Lord Jesus Christ.
To help us overcome the many distractions, beginners have to discipline themselves by thinking of Jesus, of his life, actions and instructions so that with God’s help they can succeed in developing their awareness and devotion. As in the case of an actual gardener, the watering of the soil and the flowers brings its own satisfaction and encouragement – and an encouragement to keep going. These are the things we can do for ourselves, with the understanding that we do so by the help of God, for without “this help, as we know well, we cannot have so much as a good thought.” At least we are already doing our part – watering the garden.
In this FIRST way of praying, Teresa is saying that it is not enough just to recite prayers. The essence consists of establishing or fostering some consciousness of the person of Jesus Christ and a stronger relationship with Him which will help us to overcome periods of dryness as well as distractions and even sickness.
But what happens when the well goes dry? The sheer effort to get water becomes useless – and in the spiritual sense, one feels nothing but dryness, disappointment, anxiety, even the sense of giving up. Teresa points out that sometimes for reasons known only to God when “we, like good gardeners, do what lies in our power, He sustains the garden without water and makes the virtues grow.” She also warns us that if the gardener doesn’t keep in mind that this work serves the Lord (owner of the garden) and gives Him pleasure (this tedious and monotonous letting the bucket down to the bottom of the well and drawing it up empty) he will give up trying the impossible as he sees it. Teresa is stressing all the time that our effort at prayer, symbolized by the carrying of water from the bottom to water the garden, pleases the Lord and gives Him praise. “The gardener helps Christ carry the cross and reflects that the Lord lived in it all during His life.” The gardener is so determined, even though this dryness lasts a long time, not to let Christ fall with the cross. The seemingly fruitless effort is not wasted because he works for the good Lord and the gardener knows he is satisfying Him. Teresa adds, “He (the gardener) doesn’t fear that the work is being wasted. He is serving a good Master whose eyes are upon him.”
The SECOND way of drawing water is that which is ordained by the Lord of the garden. You draw more water with less effort. And you are able to take some rest instead of being continually at work. She calls this the Prayer of Quiet. In this state the soul begins to recollect itself which it could not do by its own exertions. This water of great blessings and favors which the Lord gives in this state makes the virtues grow much more, beyond all comparison, than in the previous one; for the soul is already rising from its miserable condition and gaining some foreknowledge of the joys of glory. Many attain this level, and few pass beyond it she says.
The THIRD water is that from a river or a spring. This irrigates the garden with much less trouble, although a certain amount of effort is caused by the directing of it. But the Lord is now pleased to help the gardener, so it is He who does most everything. This state is like a sleeping of the faculties, which are neither wholly lost nor yet can understand how they work. The pleasure and sweetness and delight are incomparably greater than in the previous state, for the water of grace rises to the very neck of the soul, so that it is unable to go forward, and has no idea how to do so, yet neither can it turn back. It is like a person holding a candle in his/her hand who is soon to die a death that s/he longs for and in that agony s/he is rejoicing with complete joy.
The FOURTH degree of prayer, or the fourth water, is described as “the soul still feeling that it is not completely dead – it retains sufficient sense to realize that it is in the world and to be conscious of its loneliness and it makes use of exterior things for the expression of its feelings, even if this is only possible by signs.” Now the labor of this prayer is accompanied by such bliss and consolation that the soul’s desire would be never to abandon it; the labor is felt to be not labor at all but bliss. There is only a feeling of rejoicing, and all the senses are occupied, so that none of them is free or able to act in any way either outwardly or inwardly.”
Question for Reflections or Sharing:
- What speaks to you in the images of the Four Waters that Teresa of Avila uses for speaking of prayer? How do her images relate to your experience of prayer?
- Are there any images you would give to prayer/your prayer?
- Are there any ways in which you have experienced your prayer changing What has made a difference for you in the way you pray or in how prayer influences your relationship with God?
- Where have you seen water bring life to creation? What did you notice, and what might it invite you to consider about our relationship with the natural world?
