Water

I don't always think of it this way, but clouds are water, too.

 A great deal of what I encounter is water. All of biological life is organized around it; trees, plants, animals, people—everything is mostly water.

 I got to thinking about this after my last somewhat grim post, and then running into this article on the shortage of water around the planet. An irony on a planet whose surface is rich in water, and where more and more ice is melting.

 I don't really understand water. I depend on it, utterly, and yet it's more or less taken for granted. People in societies where you can get water don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. The idea that there are places and even whole populations in drought conditions who are desperate for it, or poisoned by it because of pollution or contamination, is remote. And water is a chemical, a substance: something clinical, a matter for public utilities, engineers, and scientists to manage. Who wants to think about it? I just want to turn on my faucet and have it.

...But I don't always think about it this way, either.

This morning, I stand in the shower under a stream of clean, warm water, because I'm one of those individuals—there are few of us, measured in percentages—fortunate enough to live in a place where this is possible.  There is no stall, no modern sliding doors; our bathtub is charmingly outdated. It's a claw-footed, enameled iron dinosaur dating from the early part of the 20th century, with a rounded bottom that makes it increasingly difficult for me to keep my balance as I grow older.

Less charming, that. We are not completely at peace with one another, I admit, but I venerate it because of its retro nature. And in the oblong cocoon of the shower curtains, every morning, the whole world shrinks down to a single moment.

  The situation is mundane and ordinary enough. Yet suddenly I see where I am;  I spontaneously assume a position of prayer, hands one on top of another, held out under the water, my head tilted slightly upward.

I'm receiving a special form of grace. My body welcomes the water, and  there is nothing but gratitude in me for being in relationship with it.

This could be the best moment of the day. Of any day.

This is life. I am in it.

This simple moment, taken in as a deeper kind of impression, is a sacred event. Every encounter I have with water is, ultimately, a sacred event. Yet it's hard to remember that if what I'm doing is washing the dishes, spraying the car down with the hose, or getting that horrid skunk smell off the famous dog Isabel.

 Yet I remember countless moments when water is glorious, and there are many of them.

Every thunderstorm I've ever seen.

A moment when I was 14 years old, watching waves rolling in off the coast of the Algarve, the sun gleaming off them like it held the secret of life— and in that moment, for me, I think it did.

Rainbows soaring up over the George Washington Bridge like all the hope in the world was pouring down onto Manhattan at once.

The moment  of the full moon in September when baby snapping turtles, sensing the rain, break through the shell of their eggs with their egg tooth and dash madly towards the Sparkill creek.

When I look back, the majority of my life has been spent in a deep, yet largely unrecognized, relationship with water in its countless iterations.

Thinking of water in technical terms is necessary, because I have to be practical about conserving it and using it. Or at least, I ought to be. The fact is that my failure to remember this substance is sacred, a precious thing, causes me to be cavalier about it.

The forecast is for rain tonight.  From the moment when the first drop falls, to the moment when the last drop falls, all of it might be a reminder that I'm not in control of things—

Just in relationship with them.

It's a thought to carry forward with me.