Very good read. Thank you. Water is a wonderful metaphor in so many ways. To live in faith often means there is no resolution, no certitude, nothing tidy spic and span clean. It’s more like throwing yourself into a River. Being able to ride along the current not knowing any direction, placing your faith in the ineffable. You see the fallen trees, towns and even villages up there on the banks of the river, you however, just keep rolling and all the while this vague sense of being carried, driven, even swept to where this is no mental assertion of some doctrine that is impossible to prove. This is about being free and unafraid of where this river is taking you. It doesn’t care to be understood. It asks only to be traveled, understanding, if there ever was, is now left on the banks. All that matters now. Riding the river…. I wrote this when I was in chemo a few years ago. Still holds true.
I have to disagree with one of your opening statements: “There’s too little water, too much water, and melting ice and rising seas. Water nowhere and water everywhere. That’s a threat to the planet.” It is a threat to human and animal life, but not to the planet. As Peter Brannen shows in his book, “The Ends of the World,” life on earth has thrived and been destroyed many times over the eons. It has come back again, but it takes hundreds of millions of years. What we are dealing with is a human created “end of the world “ that may indeed wipe out the world as we have known it, but not the planet. An exploding sun will eventually have that privilege.
Thank you, once again, for an excellent essay, Diana. I don't know if you ever go back and edit your essays once they're published on Substack. If you do, I encourage you to add a paragraph toward the beginning (where you write about current water events) in which you directly name the culprit for the droughts and the torrential rains and the glacial melting and the sea level rise: climate change.
For decades, the climate scientists have warned us that, as the atmospheric and oceanic temperatures increased, precipitation patterns would change, too. Warmer air holds more water, so warmer air will typically make dry places drier, sucking up what moisture is there. Then, when that moisture comes down as rain or snow (it will eventually come down), there will be more of it to come down ... and wet places become wetter.
As you note later in your essay, reliable water (the Tigris and Euphrates were, relatively speaking, reliable sources of water) made irrigation possible, which made farming possible, which made cities and civilization possible. The threat climate change poses isn't a threat to the earth; the planet will keep orbiting the sun. The threat climate change poses is a threat to civilization, to our ability to have food to eat and clean, safe water to drink.
Thank you for bringing the issue of the current water crises we are facing (and, though unnamed, the climate crisis we are facing) into theological focus through the rest of the essay. I hope you don't mind that I will be sharing this essay with Interfaith Power and Light as a sermon resource for Jewish and Christian preachers. As the Rev. Jim Antal (who I think you know; you follow him on Twitter) has said, "If preachers aren't preaching about climate change every month now, it won't be long before every sermon every week will be about grief."
Very good read. Thank you. Water is a wonderful metaphor in so many ways. To live in faith often means there is no resolution, no certitude, nothing tidy spic and span clean. It’s more like throwing yourself into a River. Being able to ride along the current not knowing any direction, placing your faith in the ineffable. You see the fallen trees, towns and even villages up there on the banks of the river, you however, just keep rolling and all the while this vague sense of being carried, driven, even swept to where this is no mental assertion of some doctrine that is impossible to prove. This is about being free and unafraid of where this river is taking you. It doesn’t care to be understood. It asks only to be traveled, understanding, if there ever was, is now left on the banks. All that matters now. Riding the river…. I wrote this when I was in chemo a few years ago. Still holds true.
I have to disagree with one of your opening statements: “There’s too little water, too much water, and melting ice and rising seas. Water nowhere and water everywhere. That’s a threat to the planet.” It is a threat to human and animal life, but not to the planet. As Peter Brannen shows in his book, “The Ends of the World,” life on earth has thrived and been destroyed many times over the eons. It has come back again, but it takes hundreds of millions of years. What we are dealing with is a human created “end of the world “ that may indeed wipe out the world as we have known it, but not the planet. An exploding sun will eventually have that privilege.
Thank you, once again, for an excellent essay, Diana. I don't know if you ever go back and edit your essays once they're published on Substack. If you do, I encourage you to add a paragraph toward the beginning (where you write about current water events) in which you directly name the culprit for the droughts and the torrential rains and the glacial melting and the sea level rise: climate change.
For decades, the climate scientists have warned us that, as the atmospheric and oceanic temperatures increased, precipitation patterns would change, too. Warmer air holds more water, so warmer air will typically make dry places drier, sucking up what moisture is there. Then, when that moisture comes down as rain or snow (it will eventually come down), there will be more of it to come down ... and wet places become wetter.
As you note later in your essay, reliable water (the Tigris and Euphrates were, relatively speaking, reliable sources of water) made irrigation possible, which made farming possible, which made cities and civilization possible. The threat climate change poses isn't a threat to the earth; the planet will keep orbiting the sun. The threat climate change poses is a threat to civilization, to our ability to have food to eat and clean, safe water to drink.
Thank you for bringing the issue of the current water crises we are facing (and, though unnamed, the climate crisis we are facing) into theological focus through the rest of the essay. I hope you don't mind that I will be sharing this essay with Interfaith Power and Light as a sermon resource for Jewish and Christian preachers. As the Rev. Jim Antal (who I think you know; you follow him on Twitter) has said, "If preachers aren't preaching about climate change every month now, it won't be long before every sermon every week will be about grief."