September 3, 2008
Water
I looked up water on Wikipaedia hoping I could find something to make me sound informed. I found so much, I got thirsty and also realized I couldn’t fool anybody, anyway.
What I had in mind was to write about that splendid prayer over the water in the Baptism Office. The one that recalls not only how critical is water for life and what a gift it is, but also those remarkable times and stories in which water appears throughout the Bible. Creation. Getting out of Egypt. John’s and Jesus’s handy river. The burial and the new life we share with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If I thought I knew all the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer, that prayer would probably be my favorite. Actually, it comes tolerable close.
Water’s what we’re always looking for first whenever we start exploring planets. It or a reasonable facsimile seems to be the precursor of any possibilities for life of whatever kind, I suppose even the mitochondria. Water’s the simplest of compounds and probably about as much chemistry as a lot of people know. Hydrogen and oxygen, both among the earliest of the elements spun off by God and her Big Bang. Isn’t it just like God to start things that way? “I am who I am.” How coy can one be when long before the bush* was the Noise. Maybe that Noise is the big one from Winnetka that Bob Haggart and Ray Bauduc had in mind.
It certainly wasn’t what I had in mind when this started.
*My friend Louie Crew says the burning bush shows how little regard God had for the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I wish I’d thought of that before Louie did.
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