Flowing from Lent Towards Easter

March 26, 2017

Robin Kearns

Lent 4

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

I

This past Wednesday was World Water Day. Since 1993 this day has recognised the importance of universal access to clean water in developing countries as well as the more sustainable management of freshwater resources everywhere. It is therefore timely, perhaps, to ask what is the place of water in our prayer, our relationships, our being-in-the-world?

For me, personally, there is no experience more sacred and prayerful than when I am in the mountains, descend to hands and knees and cup to my mouth handfuls of water, filtered by roots and moss.

Along with air, water is a critical requirement of sustaining life. Without water all living things eventually suffer, then die. In short, water is a fundamental physiological need. The simple act of giving water to the thirsty – whether they be people, animals or plants – is hence an act of mercy.

Notwithstanding recent floods in Auckland, these are changing times, when drought is at the door of many. When the presence and purity of water is under threat, we are surely called to reflect on the significance of water flowing through our lives.

Beyond sustaining our bodies, water fulfils higher order purposes. It has cleansing properties, washing away dirt and bodily wastes. It meets our social needs, encouraging playfulness- watch families on a beach! It appeals to our sense of beauty – consider fountains and waterfalls. According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, water meets a complete hierarchy of needs in our lives – from physiological to expressing our identity. For us on faith journeys, water is also deeply sacramental and symbolic. Yet, if our experience of water is compromised, can it retain a scared place in our lives?

II

On the shores of Lake Erie in the mid-1980s, I recall ‘geologian’ Thomas Berry pointing to the murky waters saying “if we allow waterways to become polluted, our understanding of baptism becomes degraded”. Berry was saying that the power of the symbol is sustained by the integrity of its elements. Impure water can dangerously corrode the meaning of baptism. Offering water to the thirsty, an act flowing from the blessing of baptism, is but the beginning of mercy; as Christians we are also called to act in defence of the quality of water.

III

Three images in the media have recently spoken to me of the fragile state of fresh water in NZ. First, herds of cattle are straying and defecating into lakes and rivers. Farming has long been our country’s sacred cow and to question its practices can sometimes seem tantamount to treason. Yet public opinion is turning. We can no longer ‘go with the flow’ and accept reckless farming practices as a priority over water quality.

Second, consents have been granted for the extraction and export of billions of litres of artesian water each year. That this water would be bottled and exported has added to a sense of dismay. But are multinational corporations extracting and bottling water any more morally questionable than large-scale irrigation for dairying in otherwise dry and ecologically sensitive parts of our country?

Third, Forest and Bird just received a donation of $5M from a couple wanting to strengthen its commitment to defending freshwater in Aotearoa. In other activism, last year students marched in Wellington, presenting a petition calling for all freshwater in our country to be swimmable.

If polluting waterways is a sin of commission, then surely failing to appreciate the essential value of water is a sin of omission in these morally arid times. The government is proposing ‘wadeable’ and ‘boatable’ as water quality ‘bottom-lines’. Do we want rivers and lakes that are only safe to wade in? What about to swim in, to play in, to gather watercress from? ‘Boatable’? What about potable? Let’s lift the bar and promote the contention that our waterways must support an acceptable standard of ecological health and meet a range of human needs.

One problem is that a regional approach to fresh water management sees large-scale slabs of our political landscape in charge of water policy. What about the local? One of Tom Berry’s enduring concerns was a bio-regional consciousness. Have we lost awareness, if not love, for local waterways?

IV

A useful exercise might therefore be to think about water within to your local ‘catchment’. Where does rainfall flow to within your neighbourhood? Where is your closest stream?

Where does it ultimately exit to the sea? What life does it support? How can we support its health? We need to challenge ourselves to take a fresh approach to water; to re-appreciate the blessing that it is, to feel it and taste it anew.

Perhaps we might walk out without an umbrella in the next shower of rain as if a drought had broken, as if our body and being had forgotten the blessing of being wet.

V

As we approach Good Friday, we recall that on the Cross, Jesus said "I thirst". Most literally, to thirst is to feel the body crying out to be quenched and maintain life. But at a metaphorical level, to thirst is also to yearn for something that is seemingly unattainable.

We thirst for justice, community, acceptance…and for God. The psalmist sings “my soul thirsts for thee …as in a dry and weary land where no water is." It is time to also thirst for purer waters.

In his soulful song of water crisis, Dave Dobbyn sings “Where you gonna be when the river don’t run no more? Who you gonna run to when the desert’s at your door, When there isn’t any more? (When the Water runs out). Given our taken-for-granted presumption of drinkable water and water on tap for daily needs, what should we thirst for? Surely we thirst for a land in which rivers flow clean, so the intrinsic value of all life is upheld.

To lose that thirst is to lose our passion for a just and merciful world in which, as Thomas Berry said, the water of baptism is a potent symbol. If we and the generations to follow fail to know waters distinguished by clarity, purity and liveliness, baptism itself will be reduced to a token symbol dispensed from the same plastic containers that are filled and exported by corporations from our springs.

VI

In the last week, we see hope. The Whanganui River has become the world’s first waterway to be granted the legal status of a person. Some will say this is crazy. However, this is prophetic. It offers a route out of dualism – a 3rd way.

Perhaps this is an example of what Cynthia Bourgeault calls a Trinitarian metaphysics. This move acknowledges the life force of the river that runs through all of us and will flow on even after we are gone.

It gets us beyond the dualisms of Maori/Pakeha; yours/mine; resource/sacrament. It suggests the river has wairua/spirit. It speaks to Trinity: three persons, one life: you, me, the river.

Take a walk along your own river. Mine is Oakley Creek. Treat it with Personhood. See how it feels.

VII

In Ivan Illich’s book H20 and the waters of Forgetfulness, he writes of the paradox of water as both domestic necessity and spiritual force. To him we have domesticated water at the price of diminishing its spiritual force. We have lost a sense of dwelling and now live in ‘housing’, a commodity traded as currency. So too water went from a spiritual purity, to H20 a commodity that is paradoxically perceived to be undrinkable by many so it is bought it in bottles.

VIII

Two Sundays ago we experienced a different water day. In the wake of months of rain falling in two days our creek Te Auaunga/Oakley Creek was a raging torrent.

We were then asked to save on water consumption. Again, a paradox! For a time it seemed there was water, water everywhere … but too little clean enough to drink.

As James K Baxter writes in Autumn Testament “The creek has to run muddy before it can run clear!” (Sonnet 15). We too must embrace the murkiness of Lenten questions before the clarity of Easter waters.