The Waitaha Water Gathering of October 2014 left a living current in all who were touched by it, and as the winter of 2015 arrives in Aotearoa we carry forward one of the grandmothers’ visions that walked with us all through that year, so that the waters of the Great Ocean of Kiwa may be held again in one heart.
In the winter of 2003 Mareikura Makere Aroha Anikaitawa Chapman, Mareikura for the Nation of Waitaha and keeper of the Waitaha Books, was gifted a vision. She saw Aotearoa at the bottom of Te Moana nui a Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean, pulsing with white light as people went down to the beaches to pray for Peace and healing at the same time, and she saw how powerful that would be. She has carried this vision as she travelled the world sharing Waitaha’s Message of Peace, and after the tragic events of Fukushima she called the Pacific Prayer Circle to life.
Guidance for the timing was sought from spirit, and Grandmother Turtle chose the rising of Mataariki, the Pleiades, at sunrise, just before the Central Sun, Tamanuitera, the star cluster whose return opens the traditional new year of Waitaha and Māori.
Imagine if people on the beaches of the Great Ocean of Kiwa send their prayers out then. Papatuanuku, Mother Earth, will be enveloped in the most loving wave of healing over 24 hours. How potent, how powerful, how beautiful.
Mareikura Makere Aroha Anikaitawa Chapman, Mareikura for the Nation of Waitaha
The grandmother asks us to be mindful of the intention: healing for Mother Earth, Peace and healing for all who dwell between the heavens and our beloved Mother, healing for all peoples who have suffered at the hands of others, and for all our relations of the natural world who have suffered at our hands since the beginning of time, lifting the vibration of love, truth, aroha, respect, acceptance, safety, celebration, laughter and dreaming, on and on, for the tamariki and the mokopuna yet to come.
So wherever you are in this world, go at sunrise on the morning Mataariki rises to your beach, your lake, your spring, any waterway, or simply a bowl of water in your home, and meet us at the confluence of the waters, where we become as one in the Pacific Prayer Circle for Peace, healing and balance for Mother Earth, Father Sky and all who dwell between.
Imagine Peace.
The vision and the grandmother’s words are from her calling for the Mataariki Pacific Prayer Circle, first shared in the Para PachaMama journal in June 2014. The prayer flows on from the Waitaha Water Gathering.