I was thirsty last night, so I grabbed a cup, went to the sink, and filled it with water. Then I paused. Should I drink it? Was it safe? I wasn’t sure what to do. I was afraid of the water.

I’ve spent the week in West Virginia, where I and my colleagues have been learning about the coal mining industry. It’s a major industry in West Virginia, providing jobs and a tax base, and much of the electricity we all enjoy – and demand. But coal mining has some pretty dark sides. One of the things I learned is that the water near the mines and downstream of them is polluted with heavy metals and chemicals. The processes of displacing earth and cleaning coal produce byproducts that flush into the mountain waterways. Many of the people who drink well water in affected hollows have rotten teeth and tremendous dental bills because the contents of the water eat the enamel on their teeth, leaving them unprotected from the bacterias that cause decay. We met a woman who has $10,000 worth of crowns, and heard about a young man who had full dentures at age 16 because his real teeth had all rotted from the water. Brushing your teeth is perhaps more dangerous than not.

And teeth are just the body’s first point of contact with this polluted water. The metals, minerals, and chemicals cause further havoc once ingested. Apparently, the majority of people in some areas have had their gall bladders removed, and cancers are widespread. We met a woman named Maria who said she had once been asked if she knew anyone who died of cancer. She got some paper and filled 12 pages with names. Maria is also one of the people who has had her gall bladder removed, and she has returned to drinking soft drinks because they are healthier than the water.

As my colleague Aaron Cooper pointed out, we know the statistic that one is six people in the world lack access to safe drinking water. It’s startling to realize how many of them live right here in the USA.

For a quick understanding of lots of statistics, I find this page on BBC News interesting. It contains graphs from the UN’s 2008 Global Environment Outlook report, highlighting a variety of trends at the intersection of humans and the environment. In particular, the map of the world’s access to drinking water got my attention (you have to scroll down a bit). I knew parts of Africa have significant water issues; I didn’t realize that very nearly all of Africa had insufficient drinking water. Nor did I realize how much of Asia and South America are similarly troubled. The other graphs are interesting, too. A picture really does say a thousand words.

Like many places, Chicago has had a lot of snow recently, and I’m probably the first to whine about the winter commute to and from work. But that’s the extent of my whining. I hate how much time I spend in the car, but I don’t hate the snow. The way I see it, snow and sleet are sparkly gifts that we’re lucky to get and should never take for granted – let alone curse!

Reinforcing my opinion was a recent article in Time Magazine titled “Dying for a Drink.” From it I learned that Las Vegas has a population of 1.9 million people (!!) and typically receives just 4 inches of rain a year. How long can they all live there before the water is gone? And what will happen then? I also learned that “half the planet lacks the same quality of water that the ancient Romans enjoyed” and that in India “wells that once hit water at 20 ft. now need to go 80 ft. or deeper.”

Life – including the food we eat – can’t exist without water. Everyone’s rice and wheat cost more this year because of Australia’s drought. So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Frozen water that melts slowly and is absorbed by the ground is good. It’s good for our water tables and aquifers, good for our plants and animals, and good for us. Las Vegas can only hope it’s not another 30 years before their next big snowfall. And as the snow comes down here in Chicago this winter, I will give thanks for this most precious and beautiful of gifts.

The absurdly frigid temperatures are a different story.

This is an excerpt from a blog posting on Leaves from a Lutheran Notebook. Anne is posting from Bratislava, Slovakia, where she serves the Bratislava International congregation as a Global Mission Horizon Intern. Anne’s husband, Sean, is an ELCA volunteer missionary teaching at the Lutheran highschool in Bratislava. Help ELCA Disaster Response “be there for the long haul” after flooding. Donate online at www.elca.org/giving Learn more at www.elca.org/disaster –Sue-s

Water
Posted: 15 Sep 2008 08:27 AM CDT
It is the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows, patron saint of Slovakia and a national holiday. Sean and I are listening to Morning Edition via whyy.com at almost 3pm, getting ready for school tomorrow and still recovering from a whirlwind week (teaching, sermoning, etc.) It’s been raining lightly all day, a gentle, welcome tapping on our windows that makes me glad to be inside, warm and cozy. I love days like this, especially after it has been so brutally hot.

Water can be comforting, joyful, renewing, and such a relief. Water is also powerful and frightening. Six hours after I gave a children’s message on the joyful experience of using water to remember our baptism, Pastor Kristi at St. Luke’s in Park Ridge, Ill., responded to flooding in the United States with a children’s sermon on Noah, and God’s rainbow promise to never destroy the world.

Water has as much potential for destruction as it does for sustaining creation–it is absolutely essential to life and can be absolutely deadly. God uses this powerful sign to make powerful promises to humanity: you will not be destroyed, you are my children, you are forgiven.

Lots of prayer requests on my mind today! Let us pray for the search and rescue workers in Galveston and for everyone still waiting for them.
Let us pray for everyone trying to get the basics in Houston: power, drinking water, gasoline for generators, food. May the relief efforts reach and assist them in their times of need.
Let us pray for everyone in the South and Midwest impacted by Hurricane Ike–bless relief agencies and home and business owners who will be “in it for the long haul” for recovery and rebuilding.
Let us give thanks for God’s life-giving gift of water: water used for cleaning up after storms, to sustain the people who are in the midst of recovery, and to remind all of us that God loves us, forgives us, and gives us new life.

The picture above is of us praying at the end of the children’s message, yesterday. We had so much fun sprinkling water on the congregation! You can see the kids are suppressing giggles, here. Water is a lot of fun when it isn’t in hurricane form.

I was looking at pictures of flooded Iowa today and was awestruck by the destructive power of too much water. I’ve blogged about how important water is to life. But it’s amazing how you can have too much of a good thing. So much land completely under water, killing the crops and destroying livelihoods. Between floods, tornadoes, and wildfires, it’s been a rough month or two in the United States.

How many people’s lives have been altered by nature in the past couple of months? And how many of them have the means to recover? Some are insured, have savings, and other support structures. Reconstructing their fractured lives will be difficult and emotional, to be sure, but largely a matter of time. But those living at or near poverty before disaster struck are facing a whole different reality. Disasters destroy homes, leaving some with nowhere to live. Disasters close businesses, sometimes permanently, causing loss of employment and income. Disasters interrupt health care treatment, making it difficult (or impossible) to tackle the work of recovering. Disaster interrupt education. For those who were struggling to stay in school in the first place, it can be difficult to go back. In the short term, disaster can destroy local food supplies and roadways, making short term hunger very real for everyone. But longer term, especially in rural areas, those who relied on gardens for even some of their food face new and unwelcome challenges.

The list of ways that natural disasters exacerbate the conditions for hunger and poverty go on; I’ve mentioned just a few. Knowing how many disasters the United States has had already this year, I wonder what the longer-term effect will be. How many who were living on the edge of poverty will now be solidly in it? The U.S. Census Bureau provides annual data about poverty in this country. It will be interesting to see how 2008 compares to 2007.

Last week I wrote about water, and how I had been unusually conscious of it recently. Hence it was ironic that I opened a publication from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee a few days ago that asked a series of questions about my water awareness. I could answer some of them, but not all. How about you?

• Where does you water come from?
• Is your water safe?
• Who makes decisions about the water in your community?
• Does everyone pay the same for water and sewage in your community?
• What happens in your community if a family cannot pay its water bill?
• Does your water or sewage provider have a plan for emergencies or rationing due to climate change?

If you know the answers, are you comfortable with them?

-Nancy Michaelis

How many times have you thought about water in the past week?

Where do you live?

I am fortunate to live in a place (Chicago suburbs) with, relatively speaking, plenty of water. In a typical week, I don’t think about water much at all. Some days I don’t consciously notice it; it’s just always there. But in the past week water has inserted itself in ways I couldn’t help but notice.

I think my raised awareness started when I saw the hot water running out of the bottom of our water heater. It had to be replaced, a process that took about 24 hours. Not long at all in the scheme of things, but nothing brings awareness of convenience so well as its absence. Especially when you’re trapped in the house waiting for the repair man.

With my mind thus attuned to water and its absence, I noticed several water-related news stories. Yemen is experiencing drought and, consequently, food shortages. State politicians in the “Great Lake States” are meeting to discuss how to protect the Great Lakes as our water supply. An e-newsletter I received offered assistance in planting native landscaping, in part because it requires less water than grass and some other popular plants. The latest Mars rover is looking for signs of water on that distant planet. It seems that if I pay attention, I could relate a story I’ve heard about water issues pretty much every day.

But I don’t usually pay that much attention.

Still, water got my attention again. I was at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago over the weekend. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and I was sitting on the low wall/bench along the sides of Crown Fountain. Crown Fountain is a rectangular plaza, about 200 feet long, with a rectangular tower at each end. Water showers straight down the sides of the towers and floods the plaza with an inch or two of water. (Water also occasionally shoots several feet into the plaza from the towers.) Dozens of people were playing in the water on the plaza as I watched.

And as I watched, it struck me how strange all those people playing there really was. Essentially, the fountain is an inch of water on the ground. Sure, you can stand under the showering towers, and plenty of kids were. But many more were playing in the larger space of the plaza and its inch of water. A giant puddle, really. What’s so interesting about an inch of water on the ground? It wasn’t a hot day, with uncomfortable people trying to cool off. It wasn’t just kids playing. It was babies slapping at the water, parents chasing children, teenagers posing in groups and taking pictures with their phones, couples strolling through holding hands. It was all races and, I’m guessing, all economic levels. And it was happening in a place where water is abundant. It’s not like most of these people didn’t have access to water anywhere else. But yet they were all playing – some for quite a long time – in this giant puddle.

And it struck me, as it does from time to time, how elemental water is. How people – all people – are drawn to it, moved to cover themselves in it, share life and community in it, and celebrate a beautiful day in it. The fact that water is essential not just to living but Life is often removed from my day-to-day consciousness. But that day, our connection to this most basic substance of the planet was on display, and I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to sit down and notice it.

As we enter the summer months of heat and drying landscapes, I hope to carry with me the remembrance of my water-filled week. I will try to be mindful of not only my own dependence on water, but also the fact that everyone else in the world depends on it, too. May this understanding and awareness shape my actions and make me a better steward of this most elemental aspect of Life. And may you have your own similar moments.

The following statistics caught my attention this weekend:

• The World Health Organization says a person needs 50 liters of water each day to meet basic human needs.
• The average person in the U.S. uses 300 to 378 liters per day.

If I had a little pie chart of my own use, I’m guessing the shower would account for the biggest slice. I do love a steamy shower in the winter! The kitchen sink and the toilet are probably next, except on laundry days. I wonder how many other uses would be in that chart. And I wonder just how much bigger the shower slice would be. I wonder how egregiously clean I am.

I had two opportunities to reflect on “going to the well” this weekend. On Saturday a good friend and I spent the day at the “Global Luther” conference held at Northwestern University. I followed most of the academic presentations and panels and my notes reflect aha moments, questions, and flashes of inspiration. The agenda allowed good breaks for lunch and dinner, and my friend and I made good use of them in Evanston. I arrived home after 10 p.m., feeling refreshed.

Sunday morning I served as lector at church…and the Gospel lesson, about the Samaritan woman who encounters Jesus at the well, was read by Pastor Kristi (narrator), Alpha (Jesus), and me (the Samaritan woman). It was a renewing service from start to finish.

Going to the well. Life-giving water. In the middle of hard, good work, sometimes we forget to take a drink. Sometimes we don’t realize that we are parched.

For me “going to the well” meant attending a conference outside of my work life, having lovely meals with a friend, and soaking up the Spirit during Sunday morning worship. What does it mean for you? Are you in need of a drink?