“Water Calls Us” by Lauriston King, 

Water Calls Us. 

It calls us to value it beyond measure because it is the basis for life itself.  Indeed, nearly 60% of our bodies are water.  Even more impressive, our hearts and brains are about 73% water. When astronauts first saw Earth from space, they saw a blue planet, 71% of which is covered with water. The problem is that most of this water is too salty to use.  This leaves only about 1% for drinking, cleaning, and meeting the needs of crops and animals for the nearly 7 billion people on the planet. And it’s not equally available to everyone.  Some 1 billion people don’t have access to a reliable source of clean, fresh drinking water.  In contrast, Americans use about twice the amount used in other parts of the world.

Two recent incidents remind us of these two core realities, namely, that we need water to live, and that it’s often scarce.

In January 2014, storage tanks along the Elk River in West Virginia, ruptured and spilled toxic chemicals in water used by people in nine counties, including the state capital.  Residents had to use bottled water for two months.  The leaking tanks had not been inspected by a government agency in 15 years. It turned out that there was no law requiring that they be inspected, even though they sat along a river that provided water to surrounding communities.

More recently, citizens of Flint, Michigan, have been exposed to dangerously high levels of lead in their drinking water, the result of efforts to reduce costs of water treatment and delivery. Failure to treat the water system properly has resulted in sharp increases of lead in the blood of an unspecified number of people, including infants and young children. Lead in growing children can result in reduced leaning ability as well as other behavioral problems.

Just a few days ago, criminal charges were filed against three  men responsible for that water system. One was accused of approving a permit for a treatment plant—and I quote—“knowing that it would fail to provide clean and safe drinking water to families.”

There’s much more to these two cases, to be sure. But my basic point is this: These elected officials, water managers, and company executives betrayed a fundamental community trust, specifically, that they recognize and commit themselves to provide safe, clean water to their fellow citizens. These are not just technical failures.  They are moral failures as well.

Water calls us. 

It calls us to respect its power. Anyone who been wading in the surf and been suddenly thrown to the ground and tossed about, or caught in an undertow or riptide that drags you out to sea, knows the power of the ocean. And think about how water carves and shapes the earth as it erodes deep channels such as the Grand Canyon.  Hurricanes and floods remind us of how powerful water can be.  Scientists predict that sea levels are likely to rise by anywhere from a few inches to several feet by 2100, threatening the destruction of coastal cities like Boston, New York, Houston, and New Orleans.  Respect for the power of water must be the basis for action to protect life, property, and community.

Water calls us. 

It calls us to study, to learn, and to understand how our lives are tightly bound and dependent on water.  We read and see stories about water every day, but most of the time it’s hard to see where they all add up.

That’s where science comes in.  Understanding the grand ecology of weather, climate, and climate change, is fundamentally about water.  That is the realm of those who study large earth systems, hydrologists, geologists, geographers, atmospheric scientists, and engineers. There is no debate that water is critical for life. There are no water deniers. So we, as individuals and a society, must be responsible for learning how it’s created, stored, distributed, delivered; why some places have abundant water and others do not; and how and why climate changes and with what effects.

Because water is a scarce resource, people will fight over who should get it, in what amounts, and in what order.  On Martha’s farm, the cows had first dibs.  In Bloomfield, across the river, there is a conflict over whether a private company, Niagara Bottling, should have special access to the region’s public water supplies.  This tension between private and public control over water systems goes on around the country. To understand these conflicts, and to make fair and equitable rules for who gets what, when, and how, we need the work of economists, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers.  Simply put, we must understand water in all its natural, social, and human dimensions.

It may come as little surprise, however, that there are those, even in our own Congress, who not only deny the reality of climate change, but seek to cut off funding support for natural and social scientists who seek to understand these matters. Because water is necessary for life, willful ignorance about any part of the water system is not just irresponsible, it is morally bankrupt.

Water calls us. 

It calls us to quiet, familiar places.  When I was about eight, we moved to a new house in East Hartford that backed up to a tobacco field with lots of woods nearby.  I loved to play in the woods with my friends, wade in the brooks, fight through the brush along the bank, and walk along the bends and curves, as the water slipped toward some place that I was not yet allowed to go.

Many years later I moved to Texas with my own family.  The land was flat, there were no brooks or ponds, or streams spilling over rocks, only creeks and small ponds called stock tanks for the cattle. I felt disconnected, out of place.  I missed my brooks and streams.  I slowly realized that these were part of what gave me my sense of place, of home.

And one last thing. For me, the sound that a brook or stream makes invites me to stop, to listen as it passes along a sandy bottom, or over rocks. It calls me to listen as the water breaks the silence and, if only for a moment, receive the gift of a mind at peace, and the comfort of a sense of place.

Water calls us.

It calls us to treasure it, to respect its power, to understand it, and to be grateful for its gift of quiet and place.

Will we hear it?

Will we listen to it?

May it be so.

***

“The Ocean is a Gift” by Chloe Campellone

I was 7 years old. It was the summer of 2007 in Charlestown, Rhode Island. I was with my relatives that day, hanging out at my grandmother’s beach house. I loved that place so much. There was a backyard to play hide and seek in and you could see Block Island from her doorstep. Once we arrived we were all expected to sit around on the deck chatting and drinking wine. Well, the adults drank wine. The kids had juice boxes. The adults were in no hurry.  But I had little patience for chit chat. All I could think about was getting to the beach! After what felt like hours we finally got our swim suits on and headed to the beach on foot.

It was a short walk from Grandma’s house to the beach. We walked past many cool nautical themed beach houses I dreamed of living in. As we walked I could see those glorious waves getting closer and closer. We finally stepped onto the boardwalk and I flung off my sandals in excitement. The sun was beating down on me, the sand sifted between my toes, and the smell of seaweed and too much coconut scented sun screen moved among the sea breeze. The waves were huge and they crashed and boomed loudly.  I bounced impatiently as the relatives set up their beach towels and umbrellas into little campsites. As soon as I was lathered up in Coppertone and got the go ahead, I strapped on my favorite boogie board, the one with the shark on it, and ran to the sea with all my little 7 year old might.

My cousin Julia and I liked to wait until the very last second to jump on top of those quickly moving waves. The waves were so enormous to me, I could feel the adrenaline pumping throughout my body. I remember just soaring into the air with those incredible blue waves and thinking I was on top of the world. I also remember getting pulled under the water and taking tumbles with the riptide while I hung on desperately to my shark boogie board. Some may think that getting pulled into the riptide is scary, but all I remember were the endless giggles that arose from me and my cousin after we pulled our sand covered bodies out of the water. After repeating this cycle of soaring and tumbling in the waves for a couple of hours, I came out of the sea and onto the soft beach sand. I made sand castles and remember running back and forth from ocean to shore like a messenger to get more water for the moat around the biggest castle. Despite the sometimes pesky seagulls pecking for scraps of sandwiches and potato chips, and the loads of sand that managed to migrate into my bathing suit, making for a very uncomfortable walk home, I had a great day. In fact, it was one of my very best days ever.

 I’ve returned to this same place again and again, year after year, and the ocean never fails to offer me adventure and new experiences.  Once my dad and I sat on some rocks by the breachway and he taught me to capture crabs by sticking little pieces of hotdogs on strings into the water. I couldn’t help but laugh as I watched their little claws appear from between the rock crevices to get a hunk of the hotdog. I also caught tiny harmless jellyfish in a big net. We released the crabs and the jelly fish, of course. But it was fun checking them out up close.

Another time I kayaked with my grandpa though the little rivers branching off from the sea in Charlestown. I paddled as fish jumped above the water right next to me and herons sat peacefully, apparently with full bellies, lazily soaking up the warmth of the sun.

Another treasured memory is the morning I went clam digging, or “quahogging” with my grandpa. I put on the huge waders and trudged through the water. I dragged along a heavy clam rake and a big bag to carry home my winnings. If you’ve never used a clam rake this might sound like an easy enough endeavor. Think again!  Digging for clams is hard work. You’re bent over, your hands are tired and freezing, and if you’re really unlucky you might get attacked by sand fleas — which is why my grandpa gave me the waders! And yet, I can honestly say that was easily one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.

The ocean is a gift. It cools us when we have grown too hot. It dares us to ride its waves. It teems with life and it invites us to explore it. We will never know its depth but its joy is ours to experience again and again. It calls to me and it calls to my family. It calls us all back to it year after year, summer after summer. And we come together, each taking a break from our own busy little worlds, to celebrate this gift. The ocean is a gift.

***

“The Ram Pump,” by Martha Larson

I grew up on a small family farm in the village of Still River in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts. My family had been there since sometime in the 1630s. I’m not sure when the water supply system I remember was installed, but I want to tell you about it, because although it was common in rural New England, many of you may not know about it.

Our house had neighbors on either side – fairly close for a rural village. But our property extended out back for acres and acres, including cow pastures, apple orchard, corn fields, and vegetable gardens. If you walked about a quarter of a mile through the pasture, past the saw mill, and beside the apple orchard, you came to a giant ancient maple tree, which sheltered the path down through a swampy area to the ram house. No, not a shelter for male sheep – but the little building which housed the hydraulic ram. The ram was common in rural areas – it pumped water from where it occurred naturally, uphill to where it was needed. And, it used no electricity or gasoline! Water was collected in the reservoir – fed by natural springs – an 8 x 8 building protected this water from leaves, twigs, and most animals. A small diameter pipe led downhill a few feet to the ram house. This was a 6×6 building. When you opened the door you looked way down – about 8 feet – to the sandy bottom where the ram was installed. There was a wooden ladder to climb down if the ram needed attention – which, as long as the water flowed, it didn’t.

Water flowed into the ram at high pressure, opened another valve, closed the first one with a clacking sound, and pushed the water into the outlet pipe and eventually 1,200 feet away to the holding tank in the barn. Cows got the water first, and the cool water also chilled the cans of milk each day until the Hood truck picked them up.

From the barn, the water (still pushed by the ram) went up to a holding tank in the attic of our house. When I turned the faucet in bathroom or kitchen, water flowed down by gravity. The water pressure was not high enough for a shower, but the old claw foot bathtub was used judiciously – never lots of water in it, and baths were limited – sometimes just once a week. We all learned how to get clean with a small amount of water in the bathroom sink.

We occasionally got to swim at the town beach 2 miles away, and even more rarely got to visit the ocean. But I loved to swim and so was delighted when I was 12 that my father, who had earned some extra money on jury duty, used it to build a pond down back at the foot of the apple orchard, not far from the ram and reservoir. This pond was for entertainment! Yes, it could be used to irrigate crops, but it became a place to enjoy water – to play with water.  It was a place to swim in the summer, row a boat in fall and spring, and ice skate in the winter. Countless family gatherings were held at the pond, including, years later,  my wedding reception.

During a summer storm in 1961 the barn across the street was struck by lightning. Fortunately, it housed no animals, but was old and dry and full of combustible things. The fire raged and the wind picked up. Having exhausted the supply of water the tanker truck carried, the volunteer firemen drove down to the pond – several times – collecting water that was sprayed on the roofs of the neighbor’s house and ours. The neighbor’s barn was a total loss, but no homes or people were injured, thanks to the pond.

During the mid and late sixties, there was a pretty severe draught in Massachusetts – perhaps Connecticut too. The old ram was becoming unreliable, and my brothers and I were all away at school – no one to climb down the ladder in the ram house and unclog or restart it. The cows were long gone, but garden and people needed water. A well was drilled beside the house, and the old farmhouse had a modern water system which is still working today.

The old ram house and reservoir are gone, and a new pond is in the area where they used to be. That pond is used to irrigate the fields of tomatoes, corn, and other veggies that my brother grows. It’s been used to put out at least two brush fires in the village, and still provides a lovely place to walk and reminisce.

***

“A Drink of Cold Water,” by Anne Vaughan

Many of you know that I grew up out in the Sandhills of Nebraska, on a small farm near a small town called Ainsworth. A mile away from our house was a one room country schoolhouse which I attended from Kindergarten through eighth grade. My first few years there, we didn’t have running water in the building. One of our daily jobs was to carry a bucket out to the pump, pump it full of water and bring it in to fill up a gray crockery water cooler with a spigot at the bottom. That was where we got our drinking water. On warm days when we’d play outside during recess, we’d be hot after a game of baseball or pum-pum-pull away, and we’d run to the pump. Usually the bigger boys would pump that pump handle until water came pouring out. We’d cup our hands under it to catch a drink of cold, refreshing water before going back inside for classes.

At my home we had indoor plumbing and our water was pumped by a windmill that stood on a little hill above the house. In the mid-50’s some of the farmers and ranchers still did not have indoor plumbing. We always had fresh, cold water to drink for ourselves and for the cows and chickens and pigs. I loved that windmill. It had a ladder that we could climb and look out at everything. You can still see a lot of those little windmills pumping water for cattle and horses out in the pastures.

Seven miles from Ainsworth is a very small town called Long Pine. There is a place called Seven Springs that feeds into Pine Creek. We used to love to go there and drink the water right from one of the springs because it was even fresher and colder than our water at home. My uncle once sent a sample of the water to the state for testing and they were amazed by the purity of it. Coco-Cola even had a small bottling plant there.

Not everyone has access to such good, clean water, but there are springs with good water in other places, too of course. There’s one in Willimantic where you see people filling containers with fresh, cold water. And we even have an old spring here on our property. There’s a path out back leading to that spring where you’ll find nice flat stones placed around it to make a kind of well where clear, cold water collects. This is water from that spring. (I had a jar of water that I collected from the spring and boiled it so it could be used in the child dedications.)

To me, water is sacred, but we often don’t treat it that way. When I was a senior in high school, they built a small feed lot in Ainsworth. That’s the kind of place they take range-fed cattle to be fattened up for a few weeks on corn before shipping them off to the packing houses near Omaha. Years later when we were back visiting my mom at her apartment in town, we noticed a water filter on her kitchen faucet. When I asked Mom about it, she just said the building superintendent told them to use it. But I know that it was because they were concerned about the purity of the water. It breaks my heart to think that the water once so clean and pure, which comes from the renowned Ogallala Aquifer, may now be contaminated by that feed lot and other larger scale farming and ranching that now take place there.

***

“Take a pebble, drop it in Water, Watch the Ripples on the Water”  by Mel Hoover and Josh Pawelek

I invite you to imagine water. Imagine it any way you wish. Notice that water has a spirit to it. Invite the spirit of water to come to you. Remember with thankfulness and joy plunging bare foot into river beds, riding ocean waves, swimming in pools, picking up river-smoothed rocks, skipping stones and watching pebbles create ripples on the water’s surface.

Take a pebble. Drop it in water. Watch the ripples on the water.

This is movement. This is energy. This is power. This is the spirit of water fanning out in all directions, fanning out through more and more molecules, expanding the circle, wider and wider and wider.

Take a pebble. Drop it in water. Watch the ripples on the water.

If we want to make change—any kind of change—whether we’re talking about protecting water resources, or land resources, or animals or human bodies or the earth’s body—we must be willing to ripple the water. We must be willing to start something; willing to get things moving, willing to offer a different perspective, willing to take action. We must be agitators, instigators, innovators, catalysts. We must be willing to take risks, to say what we think and feel, to speak truth to power, to send a message that moves from person to person to person.

Take a pebble. Drop it in water. Watch the ripples on the water.

If we want to make change, we must be willing to ripple the water. And if the first stone is too small and the ripples lose energy, we must be ready to drop another pebble, perhaps a larger pebble, generating larger, more powerful ripples. And when those ripples lose energy, we must be ready to drop the next pebble, and the next, and the next. May we be like pebbles dropped in water, sources of movement, energy, power and spirit.

Take a pebble. Drop it in water. Watch the ripples on the water.

May we be like ripples on the water, constant, continuous, in all directions, expanding the circle wider and wider and wider.

Take a pebble. Drop it in water. Watch the ripples on the water.

Let us take a moment together in the holy quiet to ponder the differences we can make together. What pebbles do we need to drop? What change would we like to see in our community, in our nation, in our faith? What water do we need to ripple?