The Gift of Water

as seen in the Marquette Monthly May, 2018
By Esther Margaret Ayers

Most mornings I stand at our kitchen window and drink a glass of water. Down at the end of our block I can see Lake Superior—a vast gift of fresh water. I drink slowly, grateful to live so close to the source of what’s in my glass. I ask for the grace to be life-giving this day, as water is.

I know my tap water doesn’t come straight to my lips from the Lake. The City of Marquette’s water filtration plant is just a couple of blocks away, at the foot of Arch Street. In the summer we often kayak across McCarty’s Cove and around Lighthouse Point. If you paddle alongshore from the Lighthouse toward the break wall on a calm day, look carefully down into the water; you can find where the massive green intake pipe emerges from the bottom in a straight line from the filtration plant. Follow that green line out until it’s too deep to see—our drinking water comes from there.

This is worth remembering every morning.

Near the Cinder Pond there’s a tiny spit of sand we used to call ‘Stinky Beach’ which was just below a leaky old sewer pumping station. When the City replaced the station the new one was built so its concrete roof could be a public platform accessible from the bike path. We affectionately call it ‘The Poop Deck’. If you go there, admire the fine view of the Lower Harbor, but take a moment and reflect on what’s under your feet. Remember what has to be done to our sewage out at the wastewater treatment plant on the Carp River so the water can be returned safely to the Lake.

“As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God” Psalm 42

On Easter Sunday, at the beginning of mass, I’ll receive a sprinkling of holy water from our priest, who will stride up and down the aisles of the church flinging it from an aspergillum. We had a parish priest once who used a branch of cedar that he dipped into a wide earthen bowl. It held a lot of water and I got more than a symbolic sprinkling. It was good to feel the drops, like spring rain, on my face.

I have issues on which I respectfully disagree with the hierarchy, yet I am nourished by the sacraments, the traditions, the ‘living water’ of Christ. I recognize my own need for these things. I dip my fingertips into the font and bless myself with holy water when I enter and leave a church. I love the physicality of this simple gesture.

For me, however, the divine extends far beyond the doors of any building. In the spring my restless spirit longs for the sight and sound of flowing water. I turn upstream, into the woods. I’m thirsty for the source of things.

Last year we acquired the deed to 40 acres of land along the Whitefish River. We’ve been camping and fishing out there for years. The pulsing heart of this place is a hillside spring that flows out of limestone deep in the shade of northern white cedars. To us it’s a sacred grove. I’m guessing it has long been one for the indigenous people of this area. The water that gushes out is cold and clear. Even in winter it flows freely; the moss remains green, and on its tumble down to the river the spring branch is robed in wild watercress, emerald beside snowbanks.

I have tasted this sweet water. I long to cup my hands and drink freely.

My cautious husband counsels against it; we don’t really know what feeds this aquifer. Cattle still graze on the neighbor’s pasture. A gas pipeline bisects our land.

I don’t have the sense that we ‘own’ this land . However, we do possess an abstract but very real legal right to use it. Now, my reverence for Lake Superior is vast, but in truth it’s like my rather generalized ‘love’ for ‘humanity.’ Having title to our 40 acres along the river is more like having a child—we’re intimate, responsible for its care.

In late winter we trekked out to the spring on snowshoes and finally took proper water samples for testing. We’re hoping soon we’ll have good news from the lab.

But in the meantime, I’ll do what I’ve always done here: dip my fingers into the living water, sign myself with water that always has been holy. It has always been good news for the world, bubbling forth, watering the roots of cedars, feeding the river that flows toward the Big Waters.

It is good to sit beside the spring, maybe long enough, quietly enough to see deer come and drink.

WATER SAVER TIPS

Find simple ritual gestures that will connect your own spirituality to the physical reality of water. Give thanks. Become intimate with the water in your own neck of the woods. Explore the sources of the water within, without and beyond you.

By all means, take political action, but try in all things to praise as well as blame. Look for positive water stewardship steps being taken by local, state and federal organizations and governments and make it a point to thank those who work for these things.

Contributor’s Note: Esther Margaret Ayers is a writer, teacher and musician who has lived for many years near McCarty’s Cove in Marquette.

“The Gift of Water” columns are offered by the Northern Great Lakes Water Stewards and the Cedar Tree Institute, joined in an interfaith effort to help preserve, protect, and sanctify the waters of the Upper Peninsula.