Today we celebrate water as a teacher of life’s lessons. The Tao te Ching honors water’s diversity- “Nothing in the world is more receptive and yielding than water. Yet at the same time, nothing can equal it in reshaping the inflexible and eroding the hard.”

Water is our Teacher

A physicist, biologist and chemist went for the very first time to the ocean and stood before the awesome body of water. The physicist was amazed, and decided that he wanted to measure the dynamics of the water so he walked straight out into the ocean and was never seen again.

The biologist was fascinated by what life might exist beneath the water. He walked out into the ocean to examine it and was never seen again.

The chemist, meanwhile, stood on the beachfront and took it all in with a pad and pencil. After a few minutes, he made a note on the pad that said: “physicists and biologists dissolve in water.” Pretty funny, unless of course you’re a physicist or a biologist.

You know what else is funny? Many people are complaining about paying $3.20 per gallon of gas, but do you know how much we pay for Evian water? $21 per gallon. You know what Evian spells backward? Naive!

We pay $21 per gallon for water that's put in plastic and shipped around the world, even though compared to many parts of the world, the water that comes out of our taps is fine.

You know what else is naïve? Every time that we flush our toilet, the amount of water that is used equals the amount of water that the average African person will have access to for the whole day. And you know what else? In our world today, 1 billion people are without access to clean water. It's projected that by the year 2025, 5 billion people will be without access to clean water. That is scary.

You know what is down right shameful, and an indictment on each and every one of us? Every eight seconds a child will die because they either have no access to water at all, or else the access that they have is to unclean water.

This shameful fact brings also an opportunity. If we make changes to our use of water, we will be saving lives every day.

So what can you do? How can you make a difference? There are some solutions in your inserts this week that are some very practical suggestions for things that you can do in your household that would be saving lives around the world:

• Con your favorite handyman or handywoman
into fixing that pesky dripping faucet. One drop
per second can add up to 165 gallons a month
- that's more water than one person uses in two
weeks.
• Low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators can
cut water usage in half plus they’re inexpensive
and easy to install. In a household of four, you’ll
save up to $250 per year on your water bill.
• By timing your shower and keeping it under five
minutes, you can save up to 1000 gallons of
water a month.

What I want to focus on this morning is how we can change at a “soul” level. The Mystic Rumi said, “When you live from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

So what does it mean to live from your soul? I want to suggest that there are four ways that you can live from your soul.

1) Know who you are
2) Embrace where you have come from
3) Live in the flow between giving and receiving
4) Live the change you wish to see in the world

Before I go through each one of those, let me say a world about the soul. I would expect that in a group like ours there a number of different perspectives on what the soul is. I suspect that we have some who believe the soul is an actual reality. They would believe that the soul is a part of the human makeup. Others might see the soul as the human connection to another dimension. The way I am using the word “soul” today is that it is a state of mind. The soul is an attitude of connectedness with all that is.

No matter what your understanding of the soul- whether it is an actual reality, or a metaphor, an attitude, a state of mind- the point is the same. Apply these four points in your own paradigm of soul.

Know Who You Are

There is a beautiful Sufi parable that tells the story of a stream that meanders through hills and valleys. As it travels, the stream meets various challenges until it comes to the edge of the desert.

When it comes to the desert, it suddenly discovers that its water is being swallowed by the sand. The stream is desperate at the thought that at this point it could cease to exist, until it hears the the desert speaking. The desert whispers to the stream, “The wind. The wind is the answer. Allow yourself to be taken up by the wind, and the wind will carry you over the desert, and at the right time drop you in the form of rain, and you will create a new stream or a new river.“

The stream was very skeptical about this idea and said to the desert, “If I was to do that I would lose my identity."

In answer, the desert said to the stream, "You will lose that either way. If you stay here, the best that can become of you is a quagmire. If you allow the wind to take you in its arms, you will merge with other waters. Either way you will have a new identity."

Eventually the stream surrendered to this possibility, and the wind opened its arms and embraced the stream and took it up into the air, waiting for the right time to fall.

The point is that the shape of the body of water doesn't define who it is. That's just the outer manifestation. The same is true of our human experience. The essence of who we are is the same, and is unchanging. At our essence we are one with the elements, one with the earth, one with water, one with all people and all things. That's who we are, and it cannot be changed. The outer manifestations will constantly change.

When we live from the soul, then we know who we are. When we live from our soul, we know that we are one with all things, and that has to be the basis for living with ecological responsibility. That has to be the very start, around which we can take seriously the challenges of climate change and environmental abuse.

Know who you are. Live from your soul.

Embrace Where You Come From

The gospel story from John Chapter 4 is a story that draws out the theme of embracing where you have come from. It's a wonderful story, and it's a story first of all about tragedy, the tragic separation and division of people. The poison of separation pollutes minds and hearts. The basis of the pollution that leads to war and enmity between people, is the same basis for air and water pollution; the poison that divides people and people, and people and the earth. In the first century the separation was particularly acute regarding religion and ethnic identity.

Jews would go out of their way to avoid contact with Samaritans. Many Jews traveling to Jerusalem would prefer the nine day journey east of the Jordan rather than travel the more direct route through Samaria. A Jewish man mixing with a Samaritan woman was absolutely unthinkable. Samaritan women were considered to be “unclean from birth.” For a Jewish man to drink from the cup of a Samaritan woman was unheard of. By virtue of the fact that the cup was unclean, the Jewish man would become unclean also. Yet that's exactly what Jesus does. He drinks from her cup, more concerned with drawing people together, than with upholding religious purity laws that divide.

So in the midst of this situation of separation and division, the Samaritan woman says something very profound. She makes a statement that draws the two of them together. You'll notice it's the woman that makes the connection with Jesus, rather than other way around, when she says, "Our ancestor Jacob, generations before." And with that one statement she drew two people, two groups together.

I want to draw them together in another way, and I read this into the story whether it was intended to be there or not. Consider where the water in the well came from. Where did that water come from and how old was it? We need to understand that millions of years before this time the area they were in was under water. Millions of years before this time, that place had emerged from the water, and because of various natural occurrences, various rocks, limestone and sandstones, had combined to create living water. This was Artesian spring water, millions of years in the making.

Embrace where you have come from. Not just your tradition or your family; I'm talking about embracing all the evolutionary history of which you are a part. It's when you embrace that history that you take it all the more seriously, and once again it becomes a motivation, a foundation for caring for the earth. What does it mean to live from the soul? It means to embrace where you have come from.

Live in the Flow Between Giving and Receiving

Consider the river Jordan. This is the place where Jesus was baptized. The river Jordan feeds into other bodies of water. It flows both to the Sea of Galilee, a place teaming with all sorts of sea and plant life, and it flows to the Dead Sea- where fish that accidentally swim into it, will die within minutes. How can the river of Jordan flow to one body of water that is full of life and another that is dead? Because the Sea of Galilee “pays it forward.”

The Sea of Galilee flows to other bodies of water, while the Dead Sea is a literal dead end. Bodies of water that live in the flow of giving and receiving, upstream and downstream, are living waters.

This is an analogy for us also- how do you live from our souls? Live in the flow of giving and receiving, receiving the blessings that we enjoy and paying them forward. Consider all that you have received from the Earth, and pay those blessings forward.

Live the Change You Wish to See in the World

I want to shift from Middle Eastern rivers to one of our own American heroes. The Mississippi; the great river that runs from one end of the country right through to the other end. It's a river of great history, interesting trials and tribulations, a river that has risen and fallen, and flows wider in some places than others.

The Indigo Girls sing a song called “Ghost” that begins, “The Mississippis mighty, but it starts in Minnesota in a place that you could walk across with five steps down.” A river as grand and wondrous as the Mississippi begins at a place where you can walk across it with five steps down. This is a wonderful metaphor for our lives.

If you are willing to live the change that you wish to see in the world, even in the small ways, it will be like the Mississippi River. It will catch on and it will pick up the positive changes that other people make. It will build momentum, and it will become a torrent of transformation.

How do you live from your soul?

Embrace where you have come from, understand what has taken place upstream, and create a torrent of transformation, sending downstream all of your good motivations and actions.

That's what will make a difference over the years. That’s what it means to live from the soul, to embrace where you have come from, to live in the flow of giving and receiving, and to live the change you wish to see in the world.

The Ocean Refuses No River

My final thought this morning is that this is a community with a long and rich history. We are privileged to be Christ Community Church at this time in its history. We take strength from our heritage, as if from upstream, the blessings that we now enjoy. And we pay them forward for future generations. We pay forward our blessings, so that this can continue to be a ministry of living from the soul, a ministry of connections, a ministry of living as one with the water, with the earth, with people all around the world, and with the children that die because they have no water.

This can be a vibrant ministry for generations to come if we pay forward, like the great Mississippi River, the many blessings that we have received, and give them to others.

There is a river moving with you, and within this community. There is a river moving through the heart of the universe. It is the soul of life that connects all things in an ocean of love and possibility. This river may begin small, but it is an emerging and expanding consciousness. It includes all things.

This ocean refuses no river.