The great & lesser blessings of water at Theophany are fairly well-known: sometimes the news media will even have photos of Greek boys piling into the ocean to retrieve the Cross, or Russians plunging into the icy January waters.

Less well-known is the customary blessing of water on August 1, the first day of the Dormition fast. After the Divine Liturgy, a group of us adjourned to the shore of Cayuga Lake for the blessing service.

The children played in the water, & a pair of women who were walking along the shore stopped & attended.

We're told that the blessing spreads endlessly from its origin. I enjoyed imagining our little service filling the huge lake with blessed water, spreading down the Seneca River into the Great Lakes, then down the St Lawrence to the Atlantic Ocean, then permeating the whole world.

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IC XC NIKA