Reflection
In the summertime, we are often able to sit on a beach and gaze at the waves as the ocean moves in its constant rhythm. The sense of mystery and awe that moving water inspires is always new. Its deepest desire is to run freely to the sea. Water is a pervasive life giving presence in our lives. When we speak of streams of living water we acknowledge that there is no life apart from water. The water of which we are made seeks to run freely back to its God. Our blue-green planet throbbing with life sustained by water is our primary revelation of the Divine.
Prayer
O God, pour on us the water of life, quench our thirst for the holy.
Action
If possible, during the summer, sit by the ocean and reflect on the mystery of life and creation.
Suggested Reading
Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.
John 4:10
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
Psalm 42:1-2
Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
Francis of Assisi
Access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.
Pope Francis
Water is life.
We are the people who live by the water.
Pray by these waters.
Travel by the waters.
Eat and drink from these waters.
We are related to those who live in the water.
To poison the waters is to show disrespect for creation.
To honor and protect the waters is our responsibility as people of the land.
Winona LaDuke
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
Margaret Atwood
The oceans are the planet’s last great living wilderness, man’s only remaining frontier on earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species.
John L. Cullney
Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
Lao-Tzu
When they went ashore the animals that took up a land life carried with them a part of the sea in their bodies, a heritage which they passed on to their children and which even today links each land animal with its origin in the ancient sea… each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water… And as life itself began in the sea, so each of us begins his individual life in a miniature ocean within his mother’s womb, and in the stages of his embryonic development repeats the steps by which his race evolved, from gill-breathing inhabitants of a water world to creatures able to live on land.
Rachel Carson