Water

This week (October 19 - 25) is National Water Week. A recently published book titled Water: the Essence of Life reveals that it takes 25 litres of water to grow a potato, 50 litres to grow an orange, 118 litres to make a glass of wine, 168 litres to make a pint of beer and 2400 litres to make a hamburger. Sobering statistics for the driest inhabited continent on Earth, with 70 per cent of its mass comprising desert or semi-desert. The vast majority of water on the Earth's surface (over 98 percent) is salty water in the oceans. It is the freshwater resources, such as the water in streams, rivers, lakes, and ground water that provide people (and all life) with most of the water we need to live. Concerningly the annual flow of the Murray River -- the source of 40 per cent of Adelaide's drinking water -- to the sea is about one-fifth of what it was in 1901.

To celebrate this precious resource and National Water Week there has been a SA Water Quiz Trail in the Botanic Gardens (see here) which Jane has been busy working at.

National Water Week is being sponsored by the Smart Water Mark - a voluntary, not-for-profit program that helps people to make an informed choice about saving water around your home, garden and pool. Products and services with the Smart Approved WaterMark label have been assessed by an independent technical expert panel. So look for their symbol (left) and check out their web site for lots of water saving tips

River Sunday

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

This morning, in the grace of the world, we sat near our little creek, which only has a trickle left in it and reflected on water, rivers, thirst, desire, flow, vitality and living waters. We, who are water creatures, carry rivers within us - our circulatory system, our brain ever making new tributaries, yet without other rivers to sustain us we can not survive, physically, emotionally or spiritually. To be alive the river must flow and so must we - giving and receiving, navigating obstacles to make our own path and attending to the life within as well as with out.

“Let anyone who wishes, take the water of life as a gift.” — Revelation 22:17