Reflections on World Water Day- Esu

I woke up on World Water Day, made a cup of coffee (I would learn later in the day from Huffington Post that it takes 37 gallons of water to make a cup of coffee) and immediately got to work on a newsletter for BARKA Foundation’s 2000 water activist subscribers…
In the email blast we uploaded several photos of water (my partner Ina & I live in a one-room cabin that rests three feet off the shore of a pristine spring-fed lake in Maine and have almost 10,000 photos of water in its various forms). We wrote of how water is understood within the indigenous paradigm, particularly the Dagara five-element cosmology of Burkina Faso. For the Dagara people, the Spirit of Water is about grief, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing and ultimately peace. Within Dagara numerology, years that end in the number 1 or 6, correspond to the element of water. That makes 2011 a “double” water year.
We linked the indigenous African wisdom with the ancient wisdom of Lao Tsu who said,
“THE SAGE’S TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD ARISES FROM SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF WATER. IF WATER IS UNITED, THE HUMAN HEART WILL BE CONNECTED. IF WATER IS PURE AND CLEAN, THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE WILL READILY BE UNIFIED. THE PIVOT OF WORK IS WATER”.

Five hours later the newsletter was complete (see it here: http://e2ma.net/map/view=CampaignPublic/id=27393.7001478120/rid=faf6c790...) after which came the following slew of water-related activities:
• It had been snowing all day and the ice-covered lake now had enough snow to ski on it once again. I got on the water for possibly one of the last cross-country ski outings of the winter because the ice on the lake is beginning to become rotten. I’m going to miss these short intense blasts of exercise which help balance out long stretches in front of the computer. As I skied I offered my gratitude to the Spirit of Water on which I was skiing, and respect for my life being in its hands.
• I had worked up such a sweat that I took a bucket shower outside in the snow with hot water that we heat on the wood stove. We have no running water so we bathe like we do when we’re in the bush of Burkina, with a bucket of water. As I took my bath, World Water Day, water conservation, and our small water footprint were foremost in my mind. After the bath, to submerge fully into water I jumped into the icy lake through a hole in the ice we keep open all winter, partly for this purpose. To do this on World Water Day felt appropriate… and felt great.
• I went up the hill to our Ancestor shrine to say my daily prayers. Ina had gone to a spring a few hundred yards into the forest and I decided instead to find her. The spring is a sacred place that never freezes over. It too would be a perfect to visit on this day. When I arrived Ina had already gone. I performed a small ceremony and prayed for the healing of our earth’s waters… the following thoughts arose:

Water is our greatest healing agent. Our bodies are 80% water. Dr. Masuro Emoto, the Japanese research scientist made famous in “What the Bleep?” has shown that water has the power and ability to reflect our intention. If we look at the state of water today- oil plumes in the Gulf, dead baby dolphins washing up on shore, depletion of the ocean’s fish due to over-fishing, melting glaciers, privatization, it’s easy to see what water is reflecting- Koyaanisqatsi: life out of balance.
The gift of this water year of 2011 is the cleansing and purification required to navigate through the crucible of 2012, what indigenous prophecies have called the end of time. To our understanding that doesn’t mean that the world will end in 2012. It simply means that systems that have been revealed to be corrupt and unjust will fall, and society will undergo major transformations. This process has already begun. One need look no further than wikileaks, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Japan, Haiti, US Homeland Security, Wisconsin, food security, the housing market, etc. to see evidence of this. We have created a world in which the richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined and almost 1 billion people lack access to clean water, life’s most essential natural resource. Water is raising our consciousness as we raise water consciousness on the planet.

• Ina arrived- followed my tracks in the snow. We kiss by the spring because it was so gosh darn romantic. There isn’t another human being around for miles. We live way out in “unorganized territory”. We walk home along the route that we have walked many times carrying water from the spring. Like our family in Burkina Faso, we too walk for water.
• I finally get to the Ancestor shrine to complete this prayerful day. Ina stepped onto the lake. She began belting out the Native American water song, echoing among the neighboring hills and mountains. I joined in, my voice resounding the sacred water song throughout the forest… a duet of honoring and thanking the Spirit of Water.

For the co-founders of an NGO working to procure clean drinking water and basic sanitation for the poorest of the poor in rural West Africa, every day is Water Day… however World Water Day is special because we get to share this focus with the rest of the world. It’s a celebration of solidarity, a birthday for every water activist on the planet.
Each day I ask Spirit and the Ancestors to walk with me every step of the way… today was a day like that, a day in which that happened…