Thank You God, for the water.

Water is one of the pressing issues of our time, from global privatization human rights issues to pollution in the rivers and ocean that threaten to leave us in dire crisis. Water is one of the most prevalent resources we have on this little planet, and yet it is in such a dynamic right now, that it seems there is not enough and many are suffering because of it.

I have to wonder, with all the abundance of water, if it is really our attitudes, and actions that stem from our attitudes, that needs to change. Do we suffer because of how we treat our resources? How difficult might it be to change?

It seems we are being called to appreciate the simplest of experiences and the smallest of things. In my mind, our attitudes towards our garbage and water are in about the same state. We want to use it and be done with it all at once. Once it goes down the drain or in the garbage can we want to feel as if it goes somewhere to be replenished or it goes somewhere to disappear. But in reality our neglect to care or appreciate blinds us to the fact that our garbage is overwhelming and polluting our resources severely. Our water is being sucked dry and polluted by industry, agriculture and corporations, and is being taken for granted by the average citizen of the USA. In the same motion that we consume and use, we take the water and our garbage for granted.

Yet, in face of this crisis, perhaps a shift of consciousness is needed in order to provide clean water for everyone, for the world and to utilize our garbage with innovation and appreciation?

I think of Masaru Emoto’s book, The Hidden Messages in Water, and the idea of our ability to hold love and gratitude for water or for whatever is before us to effect positive change and healing. Sometimes it only takes one word or one kind motion from a person who is radiating love and gratitude, to change the whole tenor of our day and shift the direction we are going.

In response to Emoto’s work with water and his findings, children in schools held experiments regarding our attention and the emotions we set forth with that attention, as mentioned in Emoto’s books. The children had three jars of rice. One jar they thanked every day. The second jar they hated every day. The third jar they ignored. As the rice decomposed in all three jars over time, the results differed between the jars. The jar receiving gratitude decomposed with a sweet smell and pleasant appearances. The hated jar of rice decomposed with an ugliness and a stink. The ignored jar fared the worse though, and it’s decomposition was the most terrible seeming. The conclusion was that gratitude has healing effects. Hatred has ugly effects, but not as bad as the effects of complete inattention, neglect. These experiments are consistent.

Whenever I have a shower or a bath, I always feel so grateful. It is a life giving feeling to renew ones self with water. After the bath or shower, I thank God for the water and send it down the drain with that empowerment from myself of love and gratitude. I cannot take it for granted, my response is genuine thankfulness as the benefit is so keen before me. I do the same when my daughter bathes, since she was a toddler. She often pretends to be a mermaid now, and they also cannot live without water she realizes. We say, “Thank you God, for the water.” as a kind of love song as the water goes out the drain. She also emerges from the bath with a new glowing birthed-like feeling. Having witnessed droughts and the necessary provisions of water I have learned to pay closer attention to how I use and need water. After a bath, I sometimes mention to myself, God, my husband or my daughter how good water is, and how every being on the planet has a right to enjoy water in this same way…clean and cared for.

Francis and Clare of Assisi spoke of water as lowly sister water. To be lowly, in their language, is to be the greatest of all. As Jesus hinted at, with the least being great, the last being made first, and making one’s self servant, in order to be great, well, that is water for us. Even better then, would be for each of us to be servant for water. How can we bring love and gratitude to water in our daily lives?

St. Francis said water is servant of all and therefore, one of the greatest resources, relations, sisters of all time. If we neglect her and take her for granted we face crisis, drought and hopeless polluted water. If we really see her, if we really look at sister water and appreciate her — we can look at the abundance before us and make sure to care for it.

We begin with simple actions and feelings of love and gratitude for what nourishes us and makes our lives possible. Besides the breath that we breathe, there is nothing else more fundamental to life than water.

If we look at the pollution in the waters from agriculture, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, human and animal waste, and garbage (especially plastics) we can feel overwhelmed and perhaps hopeless. However, we have the ability to hone our choices down for the greater good. If each person makes each choice and action in their day as conscious as possible, the impact would be globally positive and healing. If we were to begin to value even the smallest things in our lives, that we have been programmed to ignore and disregard, we could transform life and infuse it with inspiration and joy. Our garbage could be evaluated in a new light and we can utilize it with a sense of appreciation rather than disdain, neglect or shame.

What if the health and well being of all the world and the world’s most precious resource- water, rests in our ability to love and give thanks?

Wouldn’t that be good news?

Be informed about the state of water: See the BBC’s flashpoints world map regarding the growing global water crisis here.

Visit the Food and Water Watch website here.

The North Pacific Gyre, The Plastic Vortex, The 8th Continent:

Looking for accurate and informative resources regarding the enormous amount of plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean?

Follow the links below to better understand the importance/urgency of changing our habits, and drastically reducing daily throw away plastics and the general “throw away” mentality from our lives for good, and to seek positive solutions.

This page was last updated August 2009:

Most recent (August 2009):

National Geographic reports:  Plastic breaks down fast in the Ocean

Wallace J. Nichols posts on (April 2009) recent surveys and abstracts regarding the plastic pollution in the ocean and in sea animals, as well as reflecting the historical progression with graphs.

And for organizations dedicated to healing the ocean link to Ocean Revolution and also this Eco News Release with links to several other sites working to help the oceans, like adaywithoutplastic.org, LIVBLUE.org, shrimpsuck.org and seeturtles.org.

NPR on the vortex

Garbage from Hawaii to Japan-UK Independant

The Oyster’s Garter…re: images of the Gyre… and more

Greenpeace International on the plastic polluting the Pacific

Bloomberg.com on “Plastic mistaken for Plankton”

~

As I try to do my best to change my habits and really reduce throw away plastic and other needless garbage from my own daily life, especially, plastic bottles and shopping bags, I am mortified by how threaded it is through so many actions and things we take in a day. Suddenly I see the little wraps of plastic to seal the lid of a product or the packaging of something I am buying and I think of the dead and starving sea turtles, albatross and others with plastic filling their stomachs. This is obscene.

We as people need to take broad and firm action in this matter. Laws need to be passed that prohibit certain uses of plastics and reign in tightly the chaos of its production and disposal.

It is difficult, I have learned, from the above sources, to have a photo or satellite image of the plastic vortex. Most of it is submerged and breaking down, lots of it as tiny as plankton. It is a big complicated mess. There is not just one area of concern, there are many.

If we look for signs in nature with a spiritual eye, this is certainly one that does not speak well for us or for future. The animals who live far from us and our disposable lives are consuming plastics and dying of toxins and emptiness. May we recognize the urgency of this reality.

Certainly hope may rest heavily on the spiritual at this point. Faith must be grown strong especially in the darkest of times. Nothing is impossible for God. I am relying on this trust now, in a time when prayer and individual action may not be enough. However, there are countless loving, intelligent, capable people and groups/organizations who can make a difference here — young, old, and all the rest. May it be so.

with earnest hope and love for this life,

Chandra

Longing for the “Seven Generations” Legacy of Hope

I long for a legacy of goodness and hope for all the young people of the world and for those yet to be born. I join with those who seek healing for Mitakuye Oyasin (“all my relations”), as the Lakota people have taught. This is the basis of right relationship to all life.

I have always had hope without blinders on regarding the realities of this world. However, I have believed and experienced also, the uncommon, the miraculous, magical potentials as well. Beauty does not cease, though it may be hidden or fleeting. Though I was a child of the 80’s witnessing everything from Greed to Star Wars, I was also rooted in the land, Narnia and The Muppets. Go ahead and laugh. This is true. One of the first generations brought up with media and television of the new era.

Gathering rocks and witnessing the ant hills that were strangely tall in our fields, making mud pies in solitude with the presence of sun beams on my shoulders, that is when and where I sensed God and, I felt and trusted hope. If you were to peer into my life at that time, at the sheer dynamics of my family, hope would not have been your first thought. Now, decades later, that hope has endured, though not without the despairing valleys. So what, that is the way things go.

I am a hopeful one still. I remember reading dear Anne Frank and how she still believed in the basic goodness of our kind. I reflect on this, because surely, that gift of hope does wane in me now. I have a child. Reading about the plastic vortex in the ocean and the difficulty of retrieving the small particles of broken down plastic and the ramifications of it is a compounded agony, which includes the war, the changing Constitution, and the beginning of a water crisis.

Deep sorrow is appropriate. Outrage is called for. I was crying terribly last night. What a blessing it was to cry to my Husband, whose heart is compassionate, tender and strong.

Hope is being lost. So, my mind and heart crawl to what wisdom I can find, like, “Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love.” So, if I lose my hope, Love remains within me and around me. I have no doubt of that. Love is what motivates the agony response to our present world.

There are no Presidential candidates who are addressing issues such as, the plastic vortex crisis in the ocean, the water crisis beginning in our Nation/World, appalling violations of the Geneva Convention, the appalling and anti-life standards in factory farms, the underground slavery/disappearance of children and adults (especially minorities) in this country/in the world who have no rights or protection, the need to close the S.O.A. and holding Government officials accountable for crimes committed and the state of the Constitution, to name a few.

Kucinich is the only person who comes close to being real and true so far in this process. But media treatment and unscientific polls neutralize him. Gore is green, to a good degree, but he’s not running. No one has stood up yet and said,

“Water is the most important issue on this planet. We can’t live without it. If you elect me as your President, I am going to put priority on making clean water available for all people. We are going to make reducing pollution and loss of habitat our priority over corporate greed, convenience, instant gratification. Your lives will have to change. All our lives will, for the good of many hopeful generations to come. We have habits to break. We can no longer be of the ‘throw away’ mentality. We can no longer sprawl and consume to the death. We have many powerful attributes we need to depend on more as Americans and world citizens, such as our ingenuity, inspiration, visionary solutions, profound discernment and a relentless disciplined effort. In securing the health of our home as far as we are capable, we will also make priority the needs of the millions of children living in poverty and violence in this country and in the world. This will lead us to eliminate the contamination of our food chain with inhumane and unhealthy practices that occur in factory farms, in the polluting of agriculture, industry and our own plethora of waste. In fact, any practices that treat any life as an expendable object must cease, that we may lead by example and give evidence of our love for our own life source and our own children. We must also engage our vast global family in concerted efforts to uphold these priorities. The process of peacemaking, hope-making, restoration, if unrelenting in our commitment, holds the promise of resurrection. ‘If not now, when?’”

Well, no Presidential Candidate is giving the Great Speech, or anything like I have offered above. Where are the leaders of great heart and mind, rooted in wisdom, ethics and compassion? And if there is one, such as Kucinich, I will not vote for him, because no one will. The power of democracy is in a strangle hold. The good man is discredited and shot down. Why? Because of his height? Because of his looks? Everyone’s looking for an Alpha male, is that it? Are we just predatory creatures, voting by size, brute force, voice and breeding and nothing else? This is not what the voiceless would choose. This is not for the greater good.

The war is an important topic too. It needs to end. Not accelerate. The troops returning (injured, traumatized) are being left behind by it’s own, it is immoral. The damage done to citizens is more vast than ever. The amount of care and restoration that is already needed here and abroad is enormous on all levels. May we not be overwhelmed. The restoration of our Constitution is quite important as well. What if the next president does not restore the Constitution, but alters it further? What then?

Each day, at the personal level, I, we, must continue to find resolve , to choose love, compassion, perseverance and to live with a sense of responsibility. Each day is an opportunity to find and offer love and healing despite the tempest and the raging. However small my life, I recognize the importance of each life I encounter as beautiful, as a gift, as necessary.

The Sacred is what we, I, seek. The way is challenging and I am often failing. I will try again today.

peace,

C.S.S.

*(Addendum: as of February 4th, 2008, I believe Barack Obama could be the hope for the Nation, he has given a great speech. He has touched on many of the important issues, Let’s see what’s next. Right now, I would vote for him.)