We have seen the raging power of the waters, and we shudder at our neglect.
As a species, we humans (homo sapiens sapiens; the label gives me pause) have challenged all that threatens our dominion over Earth. It may appear that we have won. Let’s not be deluded. In the Northeast U.S. we have all but obliterated the greater carnivores. Lacking the bioregional balance maintained by wolf, mountain lion, bear, and winged raptor, and thus cohabiting with overpopulation of white-tailed deer and white-footed mouse, we are now prone to a far more insidious disabler and killer, Lyme disease. Are we safe?
No more have we respected the significance and grandeur of the elements. Misuse of fire ends in nuclear devastation. Air we pollute chokes us. Earth, depleted and poisoned, betrays us; as the farmer-poet Wendell Berry says, it “spurns our seed.”
As to the water, our denuding the shores of mangrove stands whipped the South and Southeast Asian tsunami to full fury. The death of the wetlands of the Gulf of Mexico drew Hurricanes Katrina and Rita inland. These were stirred into frenzy by the heat of the Gulf waters, terrifying legacy of global warming, triggered by our solipsistic love affair with the fossil-fuel-propelled automobile. The ecologian Thomas Berry has called us humans autistic and brain-sick. I shan’t argue.
Water on Earth, as well as privatized, is poisoned. Like those of the animals, its habitat is threatened, diminished, made unfit for its housing. Is Water rebelling with a vengeance? We are being told some significant and profound truths about short-sightedness, infantile approach to fellow beings, and serious misreading of our true place in our respective bioregions. Dominion? Stewardship would be more apt. Better yet, coexistence and respect. But it’s too late for simple harmony with Earth. We have destroyed too much, which it falls to us to repair—if we can.
Time to stop talking, meeting, devising. Let’s listen. Humans are in no way the only (potentially) compassionate and forgiving beings here. Whatever we do to them, Fire still warms us and cooks our food; Air still flows through our respiratory systems; Earth still allows us to plant and reap. Water is still the stuff of which we are made. Without it we are many, perhaps too many, little heaps of dust. Water still gives us life. It offers us healing.
Water can heal us. According to the brilliant visionary scientist Masaro Emoto, it is conscious and self-expressive. It reacts strongly to positive as well as negative words, even thoughts. Abused, it betrays us. Appeased, it may forgive us. But we must ask it. And we'd better convince it we’re sincere.
Diana Julian is a writer, editor, actress, and speech coach, educated in England. She writes on complementary medicine, sustainable agriculture, deep ecology, and performing arts. She may be contacted at [email protected].
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