I live in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina where the Cherokee once lived. They, as did my European ancestors, knew experientially the different spirits of different kinds of water. For example, they knew the experience of drinking living water. Later, confined and crowded together by European immigrants, they knew the experience of drinking dispirited water.
Growing up, I drank living water at my grandparents' homes in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Northeast Georgia. Their water came directly from mountain springs on their land.
While living in Boone, North Carolina, as young adults, my wife and I with our two year son, drank the living lithia spring water in Ashe County. Click the following link for more information: http://www.cabinsathealingsprings.com/our-history.htm
As an adult, for several years my wife, children and I lived in East Tennessee. Our house was connected to the city water system. However, I got our drinking water from a spring of living water in New Market, a small town next to the one we lived in. Click the following link for information about the spring http://www.houstonsmineralwater.com
Over the years we've also made several trips to Hot Springs, North Carolina, where we drank the living spring water at Hot Springs Spa: http://nchotsprings.com
Living water moves. It's fresh, clean, and alive. It's found in clean springs, streams, creeks and waterfalls. It inspirits and enlivens those who drink it. It restores and lifts weary spirits, especially the spirits of animals, including us humans.
Now living water is difficult to find. Reckless, industrialization and greed for financial gain have and continue to pollute, chemically process, and dispirit the waters of fresh springs, streams, creeks, waterfalls, and almost all other natural sources of fresh water.
Many, if not most, Westerners, have lost the awareness and experience of the spirit of living water. To find living water to drink takes significant time and effort.
Perhaps if more of us experienced for ourselves the spirit of living water, we would also experience the lifelessness of the chemically processed water that flows from our faucets as well as the filtered water we drink from plastic bottles, including bottled spring water.
Perhaps then we would be inspired to treat the water of Earth with more respect. Perhaps we would protect, clean, restore, and revive the water sources on which our lives and the lives of all the living depend. Perhaps we would stop polluting the waters of life and no longer need to chemically process it. Perhaps.
It's really up to us.
Our regard for water is a direct reflection of our regard for life itself.
I really appreciated this post, as I too believe that water is alive and spirited. It comes in many forms, and in a sense interacts with us and our emotions, as the work of Masaru Emoto tried to demonstrate. It's hard to find suitable living waters in the current environment. Most water is drained from aquifers and bottled in plastic, or else it comes through my tap after being treated with many chemicals to remove all trace of threat.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see more posts on the spirited nature of facets of the earth we don't normally think of as either alive or spirited.
Thanks, Sara! I'm planning to do more posts like you mention.
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