From Scarcity to Sacredness
Water. H2O. That crystal-like and colorful element which refreshes the body on a hot summer day and demands humility upon each crashing wave. What a powerful natural resource, integral to our development and existence since the dawn of the earth. Villages and roads to new worlds were established and traveled along the paths leading to water. How fitting, then, to recognize our bodies as special compositions of this invaluable resource. Our biological control center, the brain directing neurons and signals to the rest of the body, and our hearts pumping blood through our veins, are 73% of water.
Isn’t it marvelous that we reflect the very makeup of this Earth from which we were crafted? From the ocean vastness to the unseen vapors of air, this beautiful earth also calls 70% of herself of water. When peering off the shore into the depths of the lake, you can’t ignore the magical reflection of your face looking back at you. We can see ourselves in the earth, in water. This is not happenstance. This gentle yet prophetic declaration from Mother Nature herself is to ground us again and again that how we engage with the earth is how we tend to ourselves.
So why is it, then, that our relationship with this sustaining element, and our twin in makeup, is laden with power struggles, extraction and depletion, pollution and scarcity? As I type on my computer, I pause to acknowledge the overwhelming number of browser tabs I have open. I navigate between them with ease as I ask Google to search billions of webpages for information far and wide. The strength of my internet connection, the endless browsing and streaming, is all made possible through data centers. I’ve never seen one in person, but companies like Google are rapidly expanding their presence in cities across the country. Bigger data centers are necessary to process and store the endless data and information faster and faster. This demand for information coming at us too quick for our brains to compute, is not lost on the environment. A TIME article in 2020 reported that in one year alone, Google was granted 2.3 billion gallons of water for cooling data centers across three states. That’s enough water to fill up 3,484 Olympic-sized pools. This compares to the average 85 gallons of water a U.S. resident may use per day.
Data centers and their toll on our precious water resources may seem more removed because we don’t see this infrastructure on a daily basis (we only benefit from their existence every nanosecond we scroll through Instagram). So let’s look a bit closer to home, in our kitchen. What fruits and vegetables do you have in your refrigerator? Where did they come from? I live in California, and nestled in the center of the state is the Central Valley, which spans across enough counties to fit in the borders of Tennessee or the country of Bulgaria. The Central Valley is where 40% of the U.S. nuts, fruits and other table foods come from. It is also the source of 20% of U.S. groundwater demand, where the aquifers rely on the snowcap mountains to replenish year over year. Farmers in the region face a severe water resource management problem. We are over-pumping from the aquifers below and are in danger of depleting this resource, which could have devastating effects to the country’s entire food system. Challenges related to balancing economic vitality with water management are an extension of the story of climate change.
Pollution from industrial waste and consumer plastic use continues to threaten access to clean and purified water. And this issue is felt severely in some communities more than others. Access to clean water can often delineate between the haves and the have-nots, from Flint, Michigan to Beverly Hills, California.
This is too overwhelming to address, Charity, you might be saying. Yes, I agree. This issue of damaging our relationship with water, the vitality of life, is way bigger than all of us. Can we make amends amidst scarcity? Mending this relationship goes much deeper than checking our daily use of water and reducing the number of showers we take each week.
Let’s start at the beginning. Water is life. This phrase does not seem to hold much sentiment until we return to our births and how we came into being. The amniotic fluid which holds each one of us as our existence took shape and form is made of water from our mother’s body. The sustenance necessary for growth was offered in this holy form. The herald of birthing is the releasing of this fluid, or the ‘water breaking’. Let us remind ourselves that we are born of water.
A transition in how we show up in our relationship with water is absolutely necessary. Scarcity can only be addressed with control and management and limitations in our approach. Are conservation laws and pollution fines enough? I think not. I think it is time we return to the acknowledgement of the sacred presence of water, to let the force live as it may be, listening reverently and responding respectfully. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks to this transition to the sacred acknowledgement, which she found in her language of the Ojibwe people. She writes how the animated language brings life to the body of water held in a word. “To be a bay holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise - become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall . . .”
Between agriculture and data centers as examples of our incessant control, or lack thereof, of natural resources, we tell the water what it must be, the rate of consumption driven by the value of the dollar. Perhaps what we are missing in the grand scheme of water resource management at all levels of our economy and society is the worldview which awakens our relationship to the natural world. If we don’t change our approach, then scarcity will be all that we have left.
However, what could happen if we revisited the ancient wisdom of witnessing water as sacred? It is innate in us to invoke a reverence and awe when we become aware of the sacred around us, and in us. If water is an extension of ourselves, what does our current predicament say about how we think of our own bodies? Why do we continue to press beyond natural and healthy limits with the rapid advancement of technology? When will we connect deeply enough to notice when we might be going too far?
Robin says “in that moment I could smell the water of the bay, watch it rock against the shore and hear it sift onto the sand. A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa - to be a bay - releases the water from bondage and lets it live.”
The next time you fill up a glass of water to drink, observe its form. Become aware of what you notice. And as you tip the glass to your mouth and allow the water to flow into your body, notice the refreshing sense you encounter. Remember that water is an extension of you. Water is sacred. If you find yourself near a body of water, take a pause to listen and sense the wonder and awe and gaze upon your reflection there.
Perhaps as this acknowledgement of the sacred, and the shift of away from the oppressive expression of power that scarcity invokes in us, begins to take shape and form in our spheres of influence, then we can learn again how to tend for our natural resources in a transformative way. What could it look like for us to tend to water in companionship with the root systems of trees, the sky, the aquifers? Maybe the path to purifying our waters and preserving this resource is to release, let the water live and show us the way.
