“Troubled Waters: Spirits in a Bottle”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
July 15, 2007
READINGS:
The first reading is excerpted from the Hebrew Scripture, book of Isaiah:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
The second reading is lyrics excerpted from “Cool Water,” words and music by Bob Nolan and revised by Joni Mitchell.
All day I face the barren waste
Without a taste of water,
Cool water.
Old Dan and I,
Our throats slate dry,
Our spirits cry out for water,
Cool clear water.
Keep on movin' Dan;
Some devils had a plan;
Buried poison in the sand.
Don’t drink it man;
It’s in the water,
Cool clear water
In my mind I see
A big green tree
And a river flowin' free
Waiting' up ahead
For you and me,
Cool clear water.
The nights are cool and I’m a fool;
Each star’s a pool of water,
Cool water.
But come the dawn
We carry on;
We wont last long without water,
Cool clear water.
In my mind I see
A big green tree
And a river flowin’ free
Waiting up ahead
For you and me,
Cool clear water
The shadows sway,
They seem to say,
Tonight we pray… for water,
Cool water.
And way up there,
If you care,
Please show us where
There’s good water,
Cool clear water.
SERMON:
A few weeks ago, a brochure showed up on my desk from Public Citizen, Ralph Nader’s group. The brochure is entitled, “Bottled Up and Tapped Out: Why Bottled Water Purity Is a Myth and Reliance on Bottled Water Is a Threat.” I’ve casually avoided using much bottled water because I’ve been somewhat aware of the waste that goes into the production of it and the threat that the industry poses to the environment. I was not aware of the extent.
As I read the brochure and some other materials, I began to realize how important a topic this is, and how the underlying issues involved are so incredibly theological at their core. There is a huge theological discrepancy for me, when water – the flowing source of life and the symbolic dwelling of the spiritual realm – is put into sealed, insolated, individualized plastic units. But first, just in case you’re not informed on what is at stake, here is a little background on some of the problems with bottled water.
Much of the following information comes directly from the GreenGuide, a National Geographic website, from an article dated, February 13, 2006:
I've got a question for you: Why do Americans shell out up to 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than we do for tap?
Perhaps we've given in to the marketing and advertising hype that bottled water comes from pristine springs and lakes. This isn't often the case, however. According to government and industry estimates, about one fourth of bottled water is bottled [municipal] tap water (sometimes, but not always, with additional treatment). Aquafina, for example, is drawn from the municipal water supplies of Detroit, Fresno, and other cities.
Or maybe we're drawn to the taste or the perception that bottled water is better regulated, safer or purer than tap water. Again, the truth lies somewhere else: bottled water is not regulated as strictly as tap water. In fact, unlike tap water, regulations allow bottled water to contain some contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform and don't require disinfection for Cryptosporidium or Giardia. There is also the problem, as tests have shown, that unhealthy chemicals can migrate from plastic bottles into the water.
Another big problem with bottled water is it takes huge amounts of resources and energy to make the plastic bottles and creates mountains of plastic waste. In 2004, to produce the plastic bottles that delivered 26 billion liters of water to Americans required more than 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.
And that’s only a portion of the environmental impact. Dr. Rick Voakes, a pediatrician in Bowling Green, Kentucky, writes in his web-column, Health-Bytes, “Then there is the major problem of how to dispose of billions of plastic bottles once they have been used. Of course we should try to recycle them, but the reality is that very few of them ever make it into the recycle bin. The rest are pitched into the street to trash out the environment. Eventually they get thrown into trash cans, get hauled off to landfills, and accumulate for the next million years (since they are non-biodegradable!). By last count, 38 billion plastic bottles are discarded (not recycled!) per year in the United States.” Other sources indicate that billions of tons of plastic water bottles also end up polluting our rivers, lakes and oceans.
It is also reported that many aquifers, natural underground water reservoirs, are being invaded and depleted by water-bottling companies. They are looking to profit by the sale of this natural resource to those affluent enough to afford it. Little concern is paid for the damage being done to these water supplies or to the planet’s future need for them.
As in every community in the state of New Jersey, the Montclair Water Bureau publishes an annual report on the quality of the township’s water supply. As is typically the case, this year’s report shows that levels of contaminants of any kind are extremely below the standard thresholds set by law. The levels of contaminants in our tap water here are considerably safer than bottled water, which has even less stringent guidelines.
Municipalities have these enormous and costly water processing plants that do a better job, often or more often than not, at providing clean drinking water. And they’re finding that people don’t want to drink it. I took a walk in Verona Park the other day and none of the drinking fountains were even turned on. I had to wonder, why? NPR reported this week that the City of New York is beginning a multimillion dollar P.R. campaign in order to answer Madison Avenue’s great success in promoting bottled water. The city finds itself forced to market what is rated as the best tasting, purest big-city tap water in the country – water that comes mostly from reservoirs of snow runoff from up in New England. It really doesn’t make any sense.
So here’s how it seems to me – the producers of bottled water have sold a bill of goods, a very dangerous bill of goods, to the American people – although the phenomenon is hardly limited to this country. A high quality, natural product, which is available almost for free, is being dangerously extracted from the earth, put into containers that are also causing depletion of much needed energy sources, which by the way chemically contaminate the very product they package, as well as provide a well sheltered micro-organism breeding ground, especially when heated. The bottled product is then sold for 10,000 times the price of the original product, producing astronomically enormous amounts of waste that will be around for hundreds if not thousands of years. This is really stupid! But it’s more than that.
I’m reminded of a question box worship service I did here several years ago. Maybe I should do that again sometime. Anyway, one of the questions I got was, “Since we know we are destroying the environment of our planet and that we’ll soon be making it unsustainable, why do you think we keep on doing the same things?” My immediate answer was, “because we are stupid.”
But, that’s not helpful. It’s probably important for us to know how we are being stupid. Because the truth is we’re not stupid. We’re pretty smart, really. But we don’t seem to choose to act on what we know. So, I have to conclude that we are acting instead on what we believe. That’s what makes this a religious question. Science has done its part. We know we’re on a depletion course. Religion needs to pick up the slack.
Staying with the metaphor of water, I turn to one of my favorite Unitarian Universalist theologians, the recently late Kurt Vonnegut. In one of the first novels of his that I read, Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut fictionalizes the very real phenomenon of “Ice Nine.” In his fictional version, ice nine is this incredibly threatening molecular structure that spreads from one molecule of water to the next, freezing each new molecule as it is contacted.
Vonnegut goes on to describe the way in which our entire planet is connected by water – from pond and lake, to stream and river, to sea and ocean. And more, humidity and dew, mist and steam, clouds and rain are also all part of the water that creates the unity of our planet. So, as the story goes, if ice nine is released even into the atmosphere it would cause a cataclysm so great that it would eventually cause the earth, even into its stratosphere, to be frozen into a solid mass of ice.
There is a very clear theology in Vonnegut’s concept of ice nine, a theology that has both explicit and tacit implications. Explicitly, the world and everything in it is one. If any part of this oneness is harmed, all of it is harmed. Tacitly, the converse is true; because the world and everything in it is one, when we honor and serve any part of it, we honor and serve the whole.
There’s another theological implication that I think is implicit here. Water is not only the source of life; it is life. We can no more separate water into little isolated units without destroying life, itself, to some extent. Water flows and moves through cycles that lift it high up into the atmosphere, raining it back down to the earth’s surface and even far below that surface. It drips and pulsates, and runs and flows in ever increasing volumes until it rises up to begin its gathering journey again. Artificial bondage of a portion of that process is temporary recklessness at best and extremely destructive at worst. The spirit of oneness will not suffer fools that recklessly impair its process easily.
Once again we ask the question, why do Americans shell out 10,000 times more for bottled water than for tap water? I really think it’s because we have not learned to embrace the kind of theology of unity and oneness that Kurt Vonnegut is talking about. To the contrary, I believe that at the root of our arrogance we can still find vestiges of the theology of Calvinism that was so prevalent at the beginning of our nation’s history.
Calvinism is the theology that tells us that the world exists for man’s dominion. It is the theology of God’s chosen people. It claims that people are divided into two camps – the smaller saved group, and the much larger damned group. We can’t know for sure if we’re saved or not, but if we work hard and are rewarded for that work, it’s a pretty good indicator that we are saved. If we get good grades and good jobs with big paychecks, it’s a pretty good indicator that we are saved.
Calvinism is not about the unity of all things. It is a mistaken notion about separateness. It encourages us to believe in a God that is separate and outside of us, making God responsible, not us. It encourages us to believe that we can separate nature from itself – including separating ourselves from nature. It encourages us to believe that, because we are saved, we are not responsible for the destruction that our behaviors reek upon the planet. If we can afford it, we think, we must deserve it; it is our right.
I suspect one of the reasons that God had to die during the last century was because the idea of individual salvation is not compatible with a sustainable earth. The God of individual salvation had to die. I only wish the process were complete. It’s such a slow lingering death. We’ll be able to stop asking ourselves, why do we keep doing these things that are harmful to ourselves, our planet and to even the possibility of future generations, when we can stop believing that we are somehow above the fray, not part of the problem, separate from it, saved.
None of us are saved unless all are saved, unless all is saved. That’s the message of ice nine and of a theology of unity and oneness. We can stop using bottled water and stop doing other things that are harmful to us by building a faith in a new concept of God, in a God that is nature, a God of unity and life. And then by asking ourselves with nearly every action we take – does this serve the unity or does it harm it. We can stop harming things by not harming them any more!
What can we do about bottled water? We can stop using it. It’s a bad thing. Does that mean we can’t take water with us as we go about our lives? No, we can take water with us. What can we do? Here are some ideas from National Geographic:
- Avoid single use containers of bottled water.
- Test the tap water at your home and if need be, purchase a filter.
- Bring Your Own Water with you in reusable plastic (preferably #2, HDPE)
- *Sniff and Taste: If there's a hint of plastic in your water, don't drink it.
- Keep bottled water away from heat, which promotes leaching of chemicals.
- Do not reuse bottles intended for single use. They are good breeding grounds for bacteria.
And I would add: keep your eyes and ears and hearts open to the larger picture of how we are a part of the oneness of all things, and then strive to live in right and accountable relationship with what you find.
My colleague, Unitarian Universalist minister and theologian, Judith Walker Riggs once wrote, “…if we want to know what we believe, we need only look at what we do. And from our actions we can determine what we believe.” Many of us here claim that we have denounced the God of traditional religion, certainly the Calvinistic God of our American heritage. I wonder if our behaviors support such disbelief. The world is calling out for larger visions of the holy, visions that will help guide us in behaving in ways that are sustaining and nurturing and caring of all things and beings, embracing them and ourselves as one. We have some theological work, still to be done.
“For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert…”
“In my mind I see
A big green tree
And a river flowin’ free
Waiting up ahead for you and me
Cool, clear water.”
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