Sweating The Small Stuff

Ever notice how things change for the better without you ever having known things weren’t already better?  These small changes made on our behalf may be small, but they add up.  Let’s do some existential math.

A Full Vessel of Love 
Mixed media on paper 2013
By Glee Lumb 

I go to the coffee shop and order a small cup of coffee for here.  Room for cream, please.  I’ve got my perfect potion worked out when it comes to coffee.  One inch at the top of the cup gives me a half-inch of cream, bringing the temperature and drinkability to…well, perfect.  Perfection is illusive and always changing for me.  It happens so slowly, I hardly notice, but these small changes make me feel like I am in charge of my universe.  No one can take away my small choices. 

Perfection is illusive and always changing for me.  It happens so slowly, I hardly notice, but these small changes make me feel like I am in charge of my universe.  No one can take away my small choices. 

So, one morning, I walk into the coffee shop down the street and order a small coffee for here.  The barista nods, takes a cup, goes to a spigot, and fills my cup with hot water.  I see the steam coming up, her hand swizzle the cup, and set it down on the counter.  How exciting to see that my cup is being so lovingly prepared. 

I pay for the coffee, one ninety, ten cents to the tip jar.  Not much of a tip, but I figure it adds up.  She turns and pours the hot water out of my cup into a small sink and down the drain.  My lovely hot cup is then filled to just the right spot with steaming hot coffee.  Beautiful.  It feels good in my hand and I smile with the warmth of a morning sun. 

This is a new thing, the loving preparation of my cup with hot water.  Before, I would have expected it to be clean and made of thick ceramic, a classic design with purpose and function.  I expected the handle to fit my fingers and the mug to fit my hand.  And soft.  I like a soft cup.  But the hot water was so subtle, such a treat.  It’s such a nice idea.  It wasn’t my choice, but no one would think to ask customers whether or not they would like to have a warm cup.  I am grateful for this misguided effort to give me more warmth and joy.  Who would turn down an external experience of warmth and joy?  Isn’t this what being an American is all about? 

Who would turn down an external experience of warmth and joy?  Isn’t this what being an American is all about? 

Water Tower at Hydro Park
Ne Portland, Oregon
By Glee Lumb

But wait, isn’t my hot cup of coffee taking away from what I have, from what we have?  Did anyone think to say “No, thank-you!” to the lovingly prepared cup?  Did anyone else feel angry about this added bonus to our morning routine already wrought with ecological guilt?  After all, I am not the only one who got the heated cup treatment.  Hundreds of customers that day got the hot water treatment. They probably got it day after day for months.  Did we even notice when having a hot cup became a basic offering at a coffee shop?  Who started it?  How many cups of hot water have been poured down the drain this year?  How much water is that?  How much does that cost the coffee shop in water bills?  How much does that cost us, as a community, in clean water for the future?  I know, you might be thinking, “It’s still clean water. We didn’t dirty it.”  Well, it wasn’t dirty in the cup, but it joined its buddies in the water world of the sewer, where dirty, clean, filthy, and poisoned are together.  Where a little pesticide here, a little hair dye there, a bit of paint down here add up to a lot of yucky water that has to be cleaned.  And does it ever really get clean?  So, here is this sweet, hot, innocent cup of water, given with good intention, and it ends up being a much greater burden than the comfort it was mean to be.  I can think of a lot of things that have ended up being a much greater burden than the comfort they were meant to be. 

The Inevitability of Change 
Mixed media on paper
By Glee Lumb 2013

So, tomorrow, I’ll start sweating the small stuff and say, “Hey, you don't have to heat my cup.  It’s not worth it. That clean water is worth more than the heat it carries.  The heat is only a temporary condition.  The energy used to heat the water is more precious than my temporary experience of warmth and joy.  So, please, hold the hot water.” 

Learn more:  Everything You Know About 

                      Water Conservation Is Wrong

                     Friendly Water For The World

                                                                              

The God of Wet Things

I had a vision in the silence.  There is a sparkling, clear aquifer deep under the earth.  It took hundreds of years to become this way.  Water filtered down through hard rock, clay, roots of trees, grass, and air, even through our own bodies.  It filters through everything in our world and has always existed.  The only way for it to become truly clean is for it to move ever gently through the earth to where it collects in one place, together.  It is a celebration of interconnectedness.  It is evidence that we are all touched in some way by the same substance, by one of the elements that give us life.  It is an ancient idea ever living and changing.  And it is gentle.  It is very gentle.  It takes time.  The water is powerful in its patience and its loyalty to the laws of gravity.   It can do nothing but collect together.  It is powerful in its ability to transform.  It can be caught, but it can escape.  It escapes because we need it.  It will always be needed.  We will always be thirsty.   Life is about satisfying this thirst.  

The pure water is rare anymore.  I grew up drinking, bathing, swimming, and cooking, with water from a huge aquifer under the wetlands of the Sacramento Valley in California.  In the summer, the well would bring the water effortlessly to the surface.  I could feel the aquifer under the red clay dirt of the open fields. 

It was delicious.  It felt good on my body, like it was conducting electricity from one nerve to another making me whole.  I could become new again in the water.  It was a clean that had nothing to do with scrubbing, soap, or heat.

The creeks and rivers were never far away.  They were inviting and clean with deep clear pools filled with gray and white rocks.  Life-abound in the water and by its shores.  It changed the rocks, the sandstone hillsides from year to year.  The water never stopped.  We dove, waded, swam, floated, and splashed.  We made a ritual out of visiting Clear Creek in Happy Valley, where I lived as a small child near Redding, California.  There were mossy, slimy big rocks to climb over and shallow creek beds to navigate. My tiny foot would step on uneven rocks with balance so lightly given that even the flow of the water was accounted for in the strength of my step.  I can still hear the constant tiny bells of the water against rocks and static white noise of rushing water. There was so much to know to stay safe, but the rules were simple, and reliable.  The water was powerful, but it always let me in.  The water was cold.  It forced me to take a deep breath and to cry out with the kind of joy that accompanies a ride on a roller coaster, eyes open wide, mouth in a wide tight circle, body held stiff with anticipation.  Exhilarating!

The ponds were warm on the top and cool underneath.  So misleading.  They were still and responsive.  If there was movement, it was shared like a secret among school children.  Ponds were alive below the surface, where things could hide and multiply.  Frogs, fish, plants, and bugs would fill the water to capacity.  Adding myself to the mix felt warm and alive, but murky.  My only demise would have been to swim out too far and not have the energy to get back.  The air was often swarming with life just waiting to be eaten by the creatures in the pond.  The entire life cycle could be played out around that microcosm of a hole with a trickle of water flowing through. 

I live a new life with water, now.  Time has made demands on our water.  It holds the life that we give it.  In all of its forms, it cleans, cools, transports, powers, quenches, cooks, grows, destroys, and more.  How could humans disrespect something that is so close to our very existence?  We need it.  Like we need love.  Its presence and movement is unpredictable.  So we save it, just in case.  We clean it and recycle it.  We also dirty the water in ways that change its very essence.  Now, why do we do this? 

Stop here. 

We need it like we need love.  We are born out of water.  We float in a warm, loving, dark, pool of water before we are born. We breathe liquid in the womb of our mothers.  Our bodies are formed in amniotic fluid.  Then the water breaks and birth follows.  New life arrives out of water. The air we breathe contains water.  It is easy to stop water from flowing, and then again it is notoriously hard to stop.  You know this if you have ever wet your pants.  It is frightening and dangerous at one moment and life giving at another.  Yet, at other times, it is completely neutral.  It is the particles that make up a rainbow. 

We learn to process water through our bodies by quenching our thirst and then responding to pain with release. To become civilized, we control the way water goes through our bodies.  Liquid is transformed in our systems and a whole new product comes out.  So, it seems natural that we would figure out how to put water into a system and allow it to be used and transformed into something unclean.  Are we just doing something that comes natural to us?  It's not unlike when we run water through the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant.  We are a creative species.  Perhaps thinking up new ways to process things is what we do best. 

A vision of the crystal clear aquifer comes back to me when I get muddled with thoughts of dams, erosion, levees, fracking, and melting glaciers.  I see the strength of the earth holding back the rushing water.  Then rocks and dirt move aside and allow themselves to be deposit in another place, a process held together by gravity.  This movement is fluid, forever changing from soft to hard.  The earth holds the water with gentle support.  Never possessing it against its will.  The water breaks her, softens her, and moves her aside, but never destroys her, for the two are connected.  They are connected like they are with all living things.  Like voluntary and involuntary bodily functions, it is an eternal dance of opening and closing, freedom and force.  Maybe we have something to learn from this relationship.  Sacred bodies, sacred earth.  

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