Patricia Paiwonski Shares the Water of Life with Mike and Jill

Patricia Paiwonski’s sharing of the water of life with Mike and Jill is a voluntary rite of trust that makes her their permanent partner and water brother. Its force lies in the choice that precedes it: they explain the bond’s seriousness, warn that she must refuse if it conflicts with her faith or heart, and leave the decision to her. Patty’s firm acceptance turns a friendship into a sacred kinship within their emerging spiritual community.

The Offer and Its Terms

Mike does not fetch water himself. He sends a glass from the drinks tray into the bathroom, has the tap fill it, and returns it to Jill. The ordinary glass becomes the center of a deliberate invitation, while Patty watches Mike’s effortless act with an interest that has passed beyond astonishment.

Jill explains that the rite resembles both baptism and marriage. It establishes mutual trust and a partnership lasting forever; the participants may tell one another anything, and the bond cannot be broken without death. Yet Jill stresses that Patty need not accept in order to remain their friend. She also corrects the assumption that she and Mike belong to Patty’s church: they do not, and may never do so, though they can be called Seekers. The offer is therefore not a demand for conversion or allegiance to a church. It asks Patty to enter a relationship whose obligations are made plain before she consents.

Mike reinforces the warning rather than softening it. He says that the rite encompasses everything marriage does and much more, and urges Patty not to drink if any reason in her religion or her heart counsels against it. The exchange makes consent central to the ceremony: the water is offered freely, and its permanence makes a willing answer essential.

Patty’s Choice and the Ceremony

Patty takes a deep breath before answering. She recalls having made a consequential decision once before while her husband watched, and having faced it without flinching. Now she asks herself who she is to refuse a holy man and his blessed bride, then states firmly that she wants the bond. Her resolve follows the warning; the scene presents her acceptance as considered, not as a response extracted by pressure.

Jill drinks first and declares that they grow ever closer, then passes the glass to Mike. He looks from Jill to Patty, thanks Patty for water as his brother, takes a sip, and offers her the water of life with a blessing that she may always drink deep. Patty receives the glass, thanks them, says that she loves them, and drinks thirstily. Jill takes it back and finishes it, naming the new relation in the plural: they grow closer as brothers. The shared vessel carries the sequence from invitation to reciprocal act; the words spoken over it articulate the trust the drinking enacts.

Kinship Beyond a Single Rite

The ceremony’s language recurs elsewhere in the Nest as both a daily practice and a formal welcome. Patty later shows Ben Caxton the Nest’s circular Innermost Temple, with its nearly swimming-pool-sized basin at the center. She identifies it as the place where new brothers are received, and offers Ben the alternatives of sharing water and growing closer or simply swimming. When he declines for the moment, she accepts his hesitation with the answer that waiting is part of the process. The invitation preserves the distinction established when Patty herself was asked: participation is offered, not forced.

The rite has a communal structure beyond the first exchange among Patty, Mike, and Jill. Patty explains that Mike may recognize readiness early: he chose Sam and Ruth to share water when they had only entered the Third Circle, and they later became a priest and priestess. Dawn and Patty may sometimes identify people for special advancement and training, though Mike is usually consulted. The circles therefore mark a path of preparation, while the water bond can be offered at different points according to a person’s readiness.

In the formal Sharing-Water service, members of the whole Nest attend, and new brothers—usually a couple—become part of the Nest forever. Patty tells Ben that he already belongs, but that the community has not yet held the service for him; his welcome is important enough that other plans are being set aside. She describes her own initiation with Sam: after they advanced through the circles, Mike and Jill offered them water in a Third Circle service when they had begun to think in Martian. Their subsequent progress through the inner circles was rapid, as the community sought to bring them to the safety and peace of the Nest.

Patty recalls that she was frightened by the prospect of merging herself with seven other people and nearly asked Sam to turn back on the way to the ceremony. In the Innermost Temple, a spotlight fell on her, her robe was whisked away, and the Nest’s members, already in the pool, called the couple to come and share the water of life. She stumbled into the pool and submerged; she describes herself as never having come up again, and never wanting to. Her account gives the ritual a threshold structure: apprehension and uncertainty give way to bodily entry into the water and lasting membership.

The Rite as a Pattern of Incorporation

The water-sharing with Patty anticipates a recurring pattern in which trust is both declared and enacted. The glass passes from Jill to Mike to Patty and back to Jill; each participant drinks, and each contributes to a bond no one person can establish alone. The sequence gives visible form to reciprocity, while the language of brothers extends kinship across gender and beyond conventional marriage. In Jill’s account, the bond includes what marriage does but exceeds it; in the Nest’s later ceremonies, the same practice welcomes members into a wider household.

The rite’s seriousness is balanced by its openness. Patty can refuse and remain a friend; Ben can postpone his answer and be told that waiting has its place. By contrast, those who accept are promised a relationship that cannot be casually withdrawn. The scene thus makes intimacy a chosen commitment rather than a reward imposed by authority. Patty’s thirst at the moment of drinking, and her immediate expression of love, mark the emotional arrival of a choice she has been allowed to make for herself.