The waters emerge from deep within the earth, from the southern end of the Edwards Aquifer.
The Blue Hole, or San Antonio Springs, is the headwaters of the San Antonio River. The flow varies depending on rain, and since it had been a record year for rain, the spring was flowing profusely (a century ago it gushed like a geyser). I sat on the edge of this “Miriam’s well” and peered into the spring, meditating upon the waters and trying to imprint them in my heart: shifting colors of sunlit aqua, green and blue, the perfect clarity of the water, and its seemingly bottomless depths emerging from a deep limestone cave far below. Tiny bubbles rose to the surface, along with tiny fish. Later, I went down the steps outside the well and waded a bit in the creek and did a “wading mikveh” in the cool, pure Blue Hole water.
The Texas creek smell
reminded me of the ranch-a fresh kind of piny, minty, cloverey green scent. The water was running transparently clear over round rocks, but there was a little mud from all the rain. It reminded me of a Midrash about how the people of Jerusalem used to “draw forth Ruah Ha-Kodesh (the Holy Spirit)” from the well that provided the water libations in the Temple.
There are bottomless wellsprings of inspiration available to all of us from deep within the Shekhinah, the divine presence within our world.
— Rabbi Julie Hilton Danan
Featured Image: Photo by Catherine Manos, phoenixportals.com
Get ready for Shabbat with a guided mikveh meditation, or return to the Gateway of Water from Underground.
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