Water

            Today, I went to Crochu again. This time, the nutrition program was distributing 100 terra cotta water filters donated by a woman in Atlanta. These clay filters will act as purifiers for up to ten years.

            The people of Crochu, like so many other people in Haiti, need clean water. There is not a single well in the town because the road to get there is so rough no well-digging truck can make it up the mountain. There are only two springs from which all 8,000 residents get the water they drink, clean, cook, and bath with. Having visited one of the springs and seeing children bathing naked next to women washing dishes next to little girls filling buckets to take home to drink all next to the fat, muddy pig wallowing in his own feces, it is a true miracle that Crochu hasn’t been completely decimated by the cholera epidemic. They have, in fact, had a large number of cases.

            Water is one of the most important things we need to stay alive. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say it is the single most important thing besides the air we breathe. One can survive weeks without food and sleep, but without water, we are lucky to make it forty-eight hours. The incredible importance of water is notable in all other living creatures. Just picture the Nile River Delta. In the middle of the Sahara Desert there is a magical strip of emerald green.

            A few years ago, I began to develop a theory about water. It became fully apparent to me during a twenty-mile hike in and then out of the Grand Canyon, a very hot and dry place itself. I wrote down my reflection two days later:

Written on May 26, 2010 traveling to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon

            The vast size of this area is absolutely stunning. You see the Grand Canyon from the top and it blows you away, but then you descend into it and you truly realize how truly massive it is. You would look back down at the trail at an area which you had just been at about 10 minutes earlier and you can see the other hikers and they are barely noticeable. Then you eyes will pan out and you would see it all: the Pre-Cambrian rocks of the Inner-Canyon, the Redwall, the Supai, the Coconino, the Kaibab and you realize just how small you really are. And then you realize that this is a canyon which has been carved in 5 million years time (nothing in geologic years) and it has been done by a single force: water.

            Water, the essence of life. Especially in this area of the country. Many areas get 10 inches of rain a year. Nashville got 13 inches in one day! Water is the combination of two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. And it is in everything that lives. It is the one unifying force that binds us all. Without it, we die. And in our globally weirding world, we are starting to fight over it. People are starting to die over it. It kills people via flooding and hurricanes and tsunamis. It is the single most powerful thing on this planet. It is the source of so much erosion. It is the source of so much life. It is what makes the Earth a hospitable place. Without water there is no life. Water is everywhere. Water is God.

            I wrote this as a naïve twenty year old. I would thus like to slightly correct my statement that “Water is God.” I believe that God is IN water but it is not the only thing he is. I now would like to propose a new theory.

I believe that hydrogen is the physical manifestation of God.

It is the most simple element, with an atomic number of one. It is contained in all living (organic) compounds. It has the potential to be humanity’s next great source of energy (i.e. the hydrogen car). And, when you try to split a hydrogen atom…well, let’s just say its explosive. Hydrogen is everywhere.

            Water is God’s greatest gift to life. But it can also kill us if we do not take care of us. Today, we are polluting it with chemicals, toxins, animal waste, human waste. All of these added elements make the water impure. Seeing the smiles today of the hundred women who received the gift of pure water, I was reminded just how important water is. In it, we are baptized. In it, we can be reborn. With it, we are given life. With it, we are saved.