(RNS and NPR) — Every new moon and full moon, a small group of Native American Church members gathers in San Antonio’s sprawling Brackenridge Park for a ceremony called Midnight Waters. They meet at a specific bend in the San Antonio River. The slow-flowing river is lined with cypress and live oak trees and attracts herons, egrets and double-crested cormorants.
“The site of what most people know as Yanaguana or the San Antonio River, near the headwaters, starts to take on the shape of a river in the sky,” Gary Perez said. Perez is a Native American Church member and the principal chief for the Pakahua/Coahuiltecan Peoples of Mexico and Texas.
What Perez calls “the river in the sky” is also known as the constellation Eridanus. He said it’s this river bend’s resemblance to the constellation and the presence of cormorants that qualifies it as a sacred place.
“These birds carry our intentions or our prayers up to the heavens,” Perez said.
In June, the c …