Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own house.”
Mark 6: 4 NRSVue
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’
John 7:37-38 NRSVue
I have said often that drinking bottled water is against my religion, and while it's a quip it's also an actual statement of conviction grounded in my Christian faith. This is the Creator's wondrous world and water if essential to our existence. We celebrate water as a metaphor for spiritual abundance and new life. As the same time we look to the ways in which we use and abuse water, how we can practically ensure that water if available to all as a sacred responsibility and right.
There is a new scientific report which confirms what has been suspected for some time now, that we are plasticizing ourselves when we drink from plastic bottles, just as we're realizing that the endless plastic packaging for our food is doing the same. This according to The Hill:
A new study has found that the average bottle of water contains nearly a quarter million fragments of “nanoplastics” — plastic particles so small they can potentially gum up the machinery of human cells.
The findings published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) open a disturbing window into a largely unmapped corner of plastic pollution — a region marked by plastics the approximate size of viruses or vaccine particles.
There are times when I roll my eyes and wonder if the motto of our United Church of Canada should be "the important of being earnest" yet I think back to General Council in 2006 -- nearly 18 years!" when a resolution was brought forward to boycott bottled water, and to not use disposable plastic containers, including at that national meeting. While we were mocked by some at the time we now appear to be prophetic rather than goofy. At the time we were concerned about plastic waste (now a global crisis) and about commodifying water (many jurisdictions have ended the "free ride" for corporate water users.)
It would appear we had it right as a community of faith, even though at the time we weren't aware of the added threat to our bodies. There are times when being prophetic may seem quixotic but prophets are not always honoured in their own town -- just ask Jesus.
Here is a CBC news item from 2006 about the UCC and bottled water:
United Church considers boycott of bottled water
The United Church of Canada may ask its members to stop buying bottled water.The request is part of a resolution againstthe privatization of water supplies that has been put before delegates at the church's general council this week in Thunder Bay.
Richard Chambers, the social policy co-ordinator with the national office of the church, said that water is a human right, and no one should profit from it. "We're against the commodification, the privatization is another way to say it, of water anyway, anywhere,"he told CBC News.
"And bottled water that we see being sold in Canada is just an example of that. The thin edge of the wedge of the privatization of water." Chambers said congregations would be asked "to put their energies and their resources into making sure there is safe public access to water locally."
Note the Bottled Water Corporations
2 comments:
The only thing worse than seeing people with bottled water(just buy a stainless steel bottle and fill it with tap water!),is seeing those empty water bottles in the garbage rather than being recycled. Or worse, in the ditch.
Worse, worser and worstest, Roger? Now you can worry that those bottles have invaded your body like something out of Alien! Thanks for commenting and have a plastic-free day.
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