"The Tables Are Turned...It Is The Water That Depends Upon Us To Keep It Healthy"

All life requires water to survive.  But, increasingly, water needs people, too -– to protect it from us and the pollution we produce. 

This metaphysical connection was made by Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, executive director of an multi-faith environmental organization called the Chesapeake Covenant Community, during a speech yesterday. She addressed a rally of more than 150 people who gathered beside Baltimore’s Inner Harbor to urge stronger government action to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. 

“For as long as we have walked upon this earth, humans have depended upon water to keep us healthy and full of life,” Cardin told the crowd at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, which included activists holding signs reading “EPA Save Our Bay” and “Clean Water is a Right.”

“Today, the tables are turned. It is the water that depends upon us to keep it healthy and full of life,” Cardin said.  “Over the past 150 years, with all our inventions, all our discoveries and all our industry, humans have become a geophysical force, altering the very mechanics of this world. Yet it is daring to tamper with earth’s delicate balance, for there are so many things we still do not understand.”

Other speakers included Tommy Landers, field organizer with Environment Maryland; and Michael Hankin, Chairman of the Waterfront Partnership.  He inspired cheers for his audacious goal of making the Baltimore waterfront “fishable and swimmable” by 2020.

But it was Cardin’s speech that moved me the most, because she talked not only about clean water as a legal right, and an economic good –- but also as a moral and spiritual obligation.  I can’t do it justice through paraphrase.

So here, in its entirely, is the text of the essay she wrote for last night’s event.  I urge you to take the time and to read and think about this.  You can find this and other essays of Cardin's on her blog  "Reimagining Eden," which she writes for the Baltimore Jewish Times.

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We gather here today with one clear message:

We must restore the health of our waters, restore the health of our Bay.

And we are committed to this message for one simple reason:

All life depends on water.

Songs and grass, trees and babies, fish, food, health.

Life begins with that miracle liquid in which we were all conceived, in which we were all swaddled and fed, floated and flourished till we - both our gilled and finny ancestors and we ourselves – heaved our bodies onto dry land and burst out into this bright world to explore what lay beyond.

Everything we do, everything that grows, everything that breathes owes its existence to earth’s water:  fresh, clean, healthy, flowing water.

Water is what sets our awesomely verdant planet apart from the millions of barren, lifeless places we see when we scan the heavens—still vainly seeking other signs of life.

For as long as we have walked upon this earth, humans have depended upon water to keep us healthy and full of life.

Today, the tables are turned. It is the water that depends upon us to keep it healthy and full of life.
Over the past 150 years, with all our inventions, all our discoveries and all our industry, humans have become a geophysical force, altering the very mechanics of this world. Yet it is daring to tamper with earth’s delicate balance, for there are so many things we still do not understand.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God rails at Job in that book of the Bible.

"Tell me, if you understand….

“Who shut up the sea behind its doors when it first burst forth from the womb?

"Who was there when I fixed limits for it and set its bars in place?

"Who cuts channels for the torrents of rain, and paths for the thunderstorms … to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?

“Are you the rain’s father? Are you the mother of the dew?”

We are indeed neither father nor mother of the rain, or the dew, or the water.

We are neither the masters nor creators of this world; we are not the designers or manufacturers of water. We are, when all is said and done, the users, the consumers, the needy beneficiaries of this awesome, earthly elixir that was here in healthy abundance before we were ever born. And which we need to leave healthy for life yet to come.

We are water’s rightful users. But we cannot allow ourselves to become its destroyers.

Yet, unless we change our ways, that is precisely what we will be.

We use water broadly, voluminously, in all kinds of ways: we drink it, bathe in it, swim in it; wash our cars, dishes, and clothes in it. We baptize our babies, purify our bodies, and gently wash our dead, in it.

We manufacture almost all our stuff with it, create energy that powers our cities with it.

Then we dump it, trash it, throw our garbage and poisons and waste into.

We need to change our ways. We need to re-imagine how to do farming, manufacturing, transportation; we need to re-design how we construct our buildings and homes and cities and streets.

We need to live in nature as good guests, for indeed we are here but a short time, and nature is our host, patiently and generously opening herself to us. But if we continue to behave badly, nature’s patience and generosity will run out.  And we will all suffer for it.

We need to change, to do things better. This is not a matter of choice but of timing. Not a matter of “if” but of “when”.  The sooner we act: the more effective the fix, the more equitable the impact, the less burdensome the cost. We need to do it now.

Thomas Berry taught that each generation has a Great Work that defines it; each generation has a sacred calling that ties “their human venture to the larger destinies of the universe.”

Our generation’s Great Work is healing this earth. We might not have asked for this task, but it is ours. It lies before us. The good news is: it is ennobling, inspiring, fulfilling to do it and do it well.
And we have already begun. We have begun to see how we can live in harmony with earth’s rhythms and capacity; we have begun to see how we can restore the waters of our planet and the life that pulses within it.

But we need to do it more, we need to do it better, and we need to do it now.

That is the message we bring today. That is the work we pledge ourselves to do.

Comments

[bonnie bick]

I wanted to attend the Chesapeake Bay Rally but was unable to be there.
Thank you for posting Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin's inspirational message.
I particularly liked...
"We need to change, to do things better. This is not a matter of choice but of timing. Not a matter of “if” but of “when”. The sooner we act: the more effective the fix, the more equitable the impact, the less burdensome the cost. We need to do it now."
I am in full agreement with this spiritual message.

[Tom Pelton]

Thanks very much, Bonnie. Rabbi Cardin is such an elegant writer. If you have time, check out the link to her blog and read some of her essays. She's very efficient and sharp with her words.

[christian louboutin]

Don't know the author wrote this article in the first place is what, but I'd agree with your views

[ed hardy]

nice to see this post