Around Shiprock or Farmington, New Mexico, Jim Chee, Tony Hillerman’s Navaho policeman, is having a cup of coffee in his trailer. Unlike the hogans of his ancestors, Chee’s trailer has running water. When he finishes his coffee and rinses out his cup, he drinks the rinse water. A people who have lived for centuries in a dry and arid land know how precious water is.
Modern science tells us that water is the stuff of life; 75% of each of us and most living things is water. Water unites us in a system at a level perceptible to the senses. The Bird in the Waterfall is more exact: "At birth we are 90 percent water. We dry as we age until, by maturity, our bodies are about 70 percent water and our blood 83 percent, for a total volume of about 10 gallons....When we eat, our food must be dissolved in liquid in our digestive systems before it can be absorbed into our bodies. Much of our food, therefore is high in water content: a potato contains 80 percent, an apple 85 percent, tomatoes and lettuce 95 percent, a watermelon 97 percent."
Water has been put to use in many ways, to quench thirst, to feed and clothe, to cleanse, to manufacture, to restore and recreate, to transport, to inspire and beautify, to extract, to etch and carve, to shelter and propagate life, to cook and wash wounds.
Tears are water, they show compunction, sadness, loss-- The disappearance of safe water, clean water, wild cascading water, calls us, perhaps to an "ecology of grief." Sometimes tears show joy, when water if fresh and clear, cleaned, reclaimed, restored, revitalized. Then we perhaps can speak about an "ecology of joy."
Our minds are streams, we say, we talk about a "stream of consciousness" experiences, insights, understandings, judgments, feelings, deliberations, decisions flow through our bodies and our minds. Our communities’ flowing consciousnesses join earth’s flowing oceans, streams, rivers--in riparian rapids and fathomless pools of peace. We are one in the web of life, water and wisdom.
Water has special religious and moral symbolism. So too does eating. Eating is a moral act. By our food choices we shape a culture. By using the lever of a dinner fork we lift a world. Our meeting here is not simply a meeting about political or legal issues. This is a meeting about a moral issue--the construction of communities, cultures and creation. We are here to defend nature and to defend community. We do so in many ways, one way is through our eating. By our choices we shape the world. Do you purchase food from retailers who support family farmers? Do you eat food that was grown by farmers who treated their animals with dignity and respect, who raised the animals humanely? Are there farmworkers, mushroom pickers, apple warehouse workers, chicken catchers, vegetable pickers, processing plant workers, immigrant laborers involved in your food preferences? Does your food habit contribute to global climate change? Is the food you eat part of a sustainable food system that contributes to the well being of unknown future generations, to a healthy environment, to a local community in a rural or urban area which has a great deal of vitality. Or will the food you eat come from a system which depopulates the countryside and demeans farmers, farmworkers, food process workers, corporate executives and their families? Let us pray today for a future which prizes and maintains our families on the land, safe, clean, healthy water and communities living in harmony on the land and water, where people, animals, and plants are treated with dignity and respect.