The Earth Is Our
Mother
October 22, 2006
Water
Deborah Judson-Ebbets
22-Oct-2006
When I was young, every June
we would go to the ocean. I would look
with a sense of wonder at the changing water.
The tides amazed me how every day the water was so high near the sea
wall and covering up the beach. Then
later at low tide, a huge beach was revealed with the barnacle rock, the spider
crabs, the clams with their breathing holes in the sand and the fiddler crabs’
domain that you see at low tide. Super
low tide was even more exciting.
I felt ecstatic and excited
to smell the sea air and run down the beach and climb on the huge sand dune
bluffs where my friend and I could jump down, to our delight. The water has moods. I can be peaceful in the bay; blue and almost
still reflecting the sky and clouds above.
The fishing boats sit peacefully in the bay. Or the water can be grey, wind whipping up
the spray, waves crashing against the sea wall, making foam.
Now as an adult, I still
enjoy skipping stones across the wavelets, and the beautiful varied sunsets. Special ones had huge puffy clouds: pink,
purple, yellow and gold. I enjoy walking
along the beach, seeing the seagulls swoop, hearing their calls, seeing the
sandpipers skittering along and hearing the roar of the surf.
But I also see some troubling
things. The shellfish was unsafe to eat
last summer because of red tide, a bacterial contamination that seems to come
more and more frequently with warmer oceans from climate change and pollution
and sewage flowing into the bays. I
treasure seeing the minnows in the shallows with the sea grass. The shoreline is the incubator for a lot of
the life within the sea. Our oil slicks
from boats and spill threaten the shoreline.
The beach on the ocean side
has started to have mung wash up. It is this black gummy and slimy material
that is bacterial in origin and a pollution by
product. I remember it appearing
recently, within the last 3 years.
The beautiful and intelligent
dolphins that swim in their family and clan groups in the oceans in deeper waters, have been weakened by pollution and changing
conditions in the oceans. If you
subtract the weight of their insulating outside layer of fat on their bodies,
they have the same brain size per body weight as humans. They have their own communicating language of
chirps and songs that the dolphins perceive as waves, like sound, but are sonar
vibrations instead. The dolphins are
very intelligent and playful and they mate as we do.
The current administration is
using mid range active sonar causing whale and dolphin brains to bleed out
their ears, killing them. They are being
sacrificed for military expedience.
Our human policies are
threatening the oceans. Increasing CO2
in the oceans has acidified them. The
salinity of the oceans has changed because of the melt water from the solar ice
caps and glaciers melting. The climate
changes have also heated up the water, killing the coral reefs. 90% of the Great Barrier Reef off of
Lester Brown, former Director
of World Watch Institute which puts out a report on the State of the World with
future predictions and trends, believes that water will be a number one issue
for everyone in the future. The scarcity
of pure, healthful drinking water will affect people everywhere.
There is an issue about
global warming or climate change that a lot of people don’t understand. Upper air currents change, causing rainfall
patterns to change, creating dryness and deserts where there weren’t any
before, and deluges – huge amounts of rainfall where historically there have
been dry areas, like southern
The amount
of storms with high volumes of water falling in short periods have
increased in the last 15 years. It is
water that we, the plants and the animals can’t use because it runs off
quickly, not soaking into the ground water and not pure with added silt from
the force of the storm waters.
What can I do about all this,
you are thinking?
We can conserve water where
possible, turning off irrigation systems when it is raining or eliminating them
altogether by planting xeriscape plants (low water usage plants), designing
your landscape for saving water now and in the coming dry years.
We can collect water in rain
barrels and cisterns. We can hold water
more effectively in the ground by avoiding clear cutting and bare soils that
cause soil erosion. Quickly seeding a
cleared area of soil with clover and vetch and grasses like buckwheat and
winter rye will not only hold the soil, but improve its fertility.
When you buy organic food for
your meals, you can help by putting a vote in with your dollars to reduce
pesticides. Pesticides pollute streams,
killing frogs, salamander and fish, poisoning the oceans and weakening the immune
systems of dolphins. Reducing pesticides
supports our health, preventing the assault on our immune systems and reducing
the risk of cancer.
Using organic fertilizers on
your lawn and avoiding pesticides, fungicides and herbicides will help. You can have a beautiful natural lawn with
out these toxic inputs and prevent phosphate and nitrate run-off into our
streams, rivers and oceans.
You can support environmental
groups with your time and your dollars, such as the Sierra Club who is trying
to prevent off shore drilling along the shoreline of the Atlantic from
Other environmental
organizations like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Natural Resources Defense
Council and others are trying to protect the oceans. The Natural Resources Defense Council is
working on the elimination of sonar for questionable military uses that affects
dolphins and whales. The Nature
Conservancy, Wild Virginia and others are seeking to protect our land and water
resources closer to home.
We on the Environmental
Concerns Committee will be offering workshops to help people in the
congregation learn how to conserve water and protect the environment, part of
the Green Sanctuary program.
The earth (gaia as a living being) has
beautiful, delicate and elaborate feedback systems that we are just beginning
to understands. We take for granted the
beauty and purity of the parks, streams and lakes. We look to nature for solace. We expect the earth to nurture us and the
water to be there for us to drink.
Our place is to take care of
the earth since we have the ability to make great changes on the earth, let us
use our intelligence and wisdom to be guardians of nature. So may it be.