Water, Water Everywhere . . . .

My good friend and colleague, Rabbi Myra Soifer, is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama at the moment.  She is in a teaching role and living in a small community there.  She has been blogging about it regularly, and most recently wrote about the ongoing water problem in her town and in the country.  Periodically, running water just stops.  One never knows how long it will last.  Hours, days, longer?  Myra wrote how she keeps a huge tub of water so that she can flush the toilet if the water stops.  "I do have electricity and food and a safe place to live," she writes.  "I just don't have water.  Frustrating as that has become, it is also a source of personal reflection."  And so it is.  How fortunate we are to have water, clean water, to drink, to use for dishes and bodies and laundry.  How fortunate indeed!

The importance of water has been driven home here in Lee County this summer with a vengeance, as we have faced a major red tide bloom, resulting in hundreds upon hundreds of dead fish, sea turtles, even a manatee or two, being washed up on our beaches, and tourists fleeing or just not showing up at all.  We have also been hit with blue green algae filling our waterways.  And most of it has been caused by human mismanagement of resources.  We have taken water for granted--and now we are paying the price.  Literally, as well as figuratively.

Maybe we all need to live in Panama for a while.  Maybe we all need to go without clean water for drinking and bathing for a few months.  Maybe then we would learn.  But the again, maybe, seeing our deserted beaches and restaurants and businesses, will cause us to take action.

It was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his famous 18th century poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner, who penned the line "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."  In some parts of the world it could have been written today.  And, if we don't pay attention, it could be appropriate anywhere and everywhere in years to come.

(Myra's blog can be found at https://whereintheworldismyra.wordpress.com)