Finding the Sacred in Water Again
By Laurine Brown, PhD, MPH
"A river that has been artificially straightened out looks lifeless and dreary. It indicates the inner landscape of souls who don't know how to move with the rhythms of living nature."
--Theodore SchwenkWater. Have we forgotten its vital essence? Long ago two hydrogen and one oxygen molecule came together in a magical way (that we still can't explain) to create this extraordinary liquid that forms the basis of all life on earth. Some three-fourths of our earth shimmers with this unique element that distinguishes our planet from our desertified neighbors.
In countless ways water is the midwife to life. Water was our first environment as we were tucked safely in our mother's womb. We drink it, wash with it, grow food with it, play in it, and seek peace in its presence. We seem instinctively drawn to water, its soothing trickle, it's crashing waves, its winding flow whose journey is always desperately seeking the sea. "It is interesting that our eye is the same salt concentration as the ocean from which we once emerged long, long ago," Peter Warshall, editor of Whole Earth Magazine reflects. "Because we have kept the ocean in our eye, so we filter the sun's light waves in the same way we did when life once began…we see the world through water."
And we must not forget that water offers the medium for life's chemical reactions. Although water has many forms (ice, snow, steam and more) it is in the liquid form that chemical reactions take place most easily, facilitating the flow and change of life. More specifically water at 37 degrees centigrade is in its most optimum state for facilitating such reactions. This is the temperature of the human body. Thus, water is in its supreme state inside us.
Mirroring the makeup of our earth home, our body is more water than any other element. Indeed, like earth, we too are three fourths water. This liquid food is our life force. Without it we cannot survive more than a few days.
And Earth's waters are us. The water that flows through our vessels, wetting our inner cells was once an ocean wave, a snowflake, a mud puddle, a cloud, a flowing river, the juice of an orange, a raindrop falling on a mountain meadow, frost on pasture grasses, dew on a morning glory.
And it was likely raw human sewage, chlorinated, fluoridated, alumed municipal water, an antibiotic-laced waste lagoon from a hog farm, chemical discharge from a factory, a creek with pesticide run-off, a lifeless lake acidified by pollution, or an oxygen-starved ocean deadened by high nitrogen fertilizers.
Yes, Earth's waters are us. As we have violated and fouled earth's waters, so have we fouled our own bodies, and those of all other creatures and plants who too depend on this liquid life force.
How could this happen?
"The more people learned to understand the physical nature of water and to use it technically, the more their knowledge of the soul and spirit of this element faded" Theodore Schwenk, author of Sensitive Chaos writes. People began looking merely at water's physical value. It seemed profitable then to drain swamps, deforest land, dam and straighten rivers, remove hedges and transform landscapes. We now realize water pollution is an artifact of our technological estrangement from the great natural systems of the planet. And having forgotten water's spiritual nature, we are now in danger of losing its very physical substance. We are threatening our own long-term viability.
Though uneasy with the word "sacred", writer Colin Fletcher (who journeyed the length of the Colorado River) acknowledges that our planet would be lifeless without water. "And if that isn't sacred", he said, "I don't know what is."
We must find the sacred in it again.
As we individually seek to redefine our relationship with water, we also need a fundamental technological revolution that will integrate advanced societies with the natural world. Some scientists are carving new paths for us.
For example, inspired by ecosystems as old as the Earth itself, John Todd has designed Living Machines, revolutionary natural wastewater treatment and reclamation systems that accelerate nature's own water purification process. (See www.livingmachines.com). Instead of synthetic chemicals, nature's janitors--plants and snails and such--do the dirty work in these simple, cost-effective, aesthetically-pleasing systems that anyone would welcome in their backyard. They can be integrated into municipalities, residences, schools, museums, resorts, industries and manufacturing plants. Among the many clients are Oberlin College, The Body Shop, The Natural Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa Florida, Smugglers' Notch Resort in Vermont, and even a Vermont highway rest stop.
And Betsy Damon of Keepers of the Waters has further developed this concept to create Living Water Gardens. These are beautiful parks that serve as fully functioning natural water treatment plants, environmental education centers, a refuge for wildlife and plants, and a wonderful place for people. The first inner city ecological park in the world with water as its theme was completed in 1998 in the city of Chengdu, China, along the Fu and Nan rivers (see www.keepersofthewaters.org). Visitors can walk everywhere in this award winning park, delighting in the many birds, butterflies and dragonflies that have taken up residence there, splashing in the flow forms, and observing the once dead river water come alive again. People see the polluted river water move through the natural treatment system and emerge clean enough to drink, a powerful educational tool.
We have a way. Do we have the will?
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February 2002
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