File:The Holy Water Collection Basin in the Church at the Monastery of Na’akuto La’ab (3422175620).jpg

As I mentioned in an earlier description, the Ethiopian Christian Orthodox Monastery of Na’akuto La’ab near Lalibela, Ethiopia, nestles under a thick ledge of overhanging rock. A mountain - not yet deforested - rises above the monastery, and a deep valley falls away below the monastery's niche. In other words, the monastery lies within a natural watershed.

So, it's not entirely surprising that water drips through the rock ledge that forms the ceiling of the shallow cave in which the monastery was built.

What's utterly astonishing is that much of the floor space in the Church of the Monastery of Na’akuto La’ab is given over to a basin filled with rock bowls placed under drips in the church ceiling.

I searched the Web extensively, and wasn't able to learn much about this amazing feature other than the water collected there is used as holy water. Oh, that and someone who published a brief and offhand description of the monastery - I hope it wasn't the esteemed Mr. Pankhurst - thinks the "red brick" church built by Empress Zewditu is "ugly." Well, I happen to think the church is lovely. And it's built from volcanic stone, not red brick.

I'll go out on a limb (again) and suggest this feature may be among the oldest at this site, perhaps dating to King Na’akuto La’ab, who is credited with building a monastery here in the 13th century. Who knows - this basin and its water-collecting bowls may be even older.

And as long as I am out on a limb, I'll venture a little further out and speculate wildly that this could have been a pre-Christian, animist place of worship, and there may still be a whiff of animism about it. To paraphrase Dorothy, I don't think we're entirely in the Old Testament or the New anymore, Toto.

After all, Ethiopia, like the rest of Africa, did not develop irrigation (or so I was told), so Ethiopian farmers (which means practically everyone in Ethiopia) are entirely dependent on rainfall for the success of their crops. As we have seen, it is truly a matter of life or death there. It's not much of a stretch to say that a place where water rains from the ceiling could develop into a very special and sacred site. As my late sister would have said, this is Big Magic.

Hey, I have to use my 32-year-old Anthropology degree for something!

According to that everyman's Harvard known as Wikipedia:

"Animism (from Latin anima (soul, life) is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans and animals but also in plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment . . ." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

I realize I'm blundering about like an Erich von Däniken in an anthropological china shop, so I'll stop it all right here.