I vividly remember learning about the water cycle in primary school. Why? Because I had to draw it. I am a kinaesthetic learner. I spent hours carefully drawing each section, colouring it in, clearly labelling it. I got a gold star. But what I learned was not enough, for what I am pondering these days is: what is the real life cycle of water, human intervention included?
Flushed through factories cleaning lettuce for mass-produced supermarket sandwiches in Kent, pumped into pipes to push natural gas from the ground in Pennsylvania, sprayed gently over thirsty golf courses in Palm Springs, diverted to vast industrial-scale greenhouses in Almería, or mixed with human faeces down a toilet into a sewer in London; water has a varied existence, one that is far more complex, manipulated, and imperilled than we are led to believe as children.
The global availability of fresh water is deteriorating; whilst access to clean water, adequate sanitation, and prevalence of water-borne illnesses are a well-researched and reported crisis regularly presented to the world. It seems to me we drastically need to change our relationship to water if we are to address the huge global inequities, which will in time become issues on our own doorsteps.
Was there a time when water was sacred, revered and prayed to, as we find in other cultures? Was there an awareness of our fragility, of our dependence on our relationship to our precious life source? Traditions such as flicking a silver coin into the wishing well originated from somewhere (have you done this, and do you consider why you are doing it?). Perhaps we can be inspired by rituals elsewhere? How do we remember the sacred nature of water?
Flushed through factories cleaning lettuce for mass-produced supermarket sandwiches in Kent, pumped into pipes to push natural gas from the ground in Pennsylvania, sprayed gently over thirsty golf courses in Palm Springs, diverted to vast industrial-scale greenhouses in Almería, or mixed with human faeces down a toilet into a sewer in London; water has a varied existence, one that is far more complex, manipulated, and imperilled than we are led to believe as children.
The global availability of fresh water is deteriorating; whilst access to clean water, adequate sanitation, and prevalence of water-borne illnesses are a well-researched and reported crisis regularly presented to the world. It seems to me we drastically need to change our relationship to water if we are to address the huge global inequities, which will in time become issues on our own doorsteps.
Was there a time when water was sacred, revered and prayed to, as we find in other cultures? Was there an awareness of our fragility, of our dependence on our relationship to our precious life source? Traditions such as flicking a silver coin into the wishing well originated from somewhere (have you done this, and do you consider why you are doing it?). Perhaps we can be inspired by rituals elsewhere? How do we remember the sacred nature of water?
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