Save Our Water

June 8 is World Oceans Day, the United Nations day for celebrating the role of the oceans in our everyday life and inspiring action to protect the ocean and sustainably use marine resources.

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An outrageous event is happening in North America. Suddenly, in the United States, water is being sold and traded as a commodity for profit.  We should have seen this coming.  For years now, right under our own noses here in Canada, Nestlé, for example, has settled in places such as Wellington County.  They have pumped zillions of gallons of precious groundwater, bottled it in plastic, paid nothing for the water but only a pittance levy of $503.71 per million liters, and sold it back to Canadians and around the world at a shocking price.

Quietly at first, but unable to tolerate what was happening to their precarious water, a group of concerned citizens in Wellington County gathered and began their work to stop Nestle’s water grab on their land.  Naming their new initiative, Save Our Water (SOW), the members who are all volunteers, thoroughly studied the water situation and enlisted Kelly Linton, the energetic Mayor of Centre Wellington.  Backed by municipal membership, the group became experts in groundwater supply and protecting it at all levels.  Since water taking is a provincial responsibility, their stewardship of local water reaches all the way to the provincial legislature where they have ready access to discussing the long-term negative impact of water extraction with politicians. (Join the Fight)

The Save Our Water initiative and the growing involvement of concerned citizens and water protectors is proving to have a successful impact.  Last month I had the privilege of being on a Zoom call of over 125 concerned citizens sponsored by Wellington Water Watchers for an update on the new moratorium on taking bottled water from Wellington County’s groundwater.

The Save Our Water volunteers, Mayor Linton and council of Centre Wellington as well as increasing numbers of concerned citizens have been the push behind Nestle’s recent withdrawal from Canada.  With one voice, they acclaim, “We are not a willing host for bottled water”.

There is still much for Save Our Water to do concerning the preservation of priceless water in Wellington County.  Vigilant oversight lies ahead as the area is projected to double in size by 2041 and the local Middlebrook well has been purchased for 4.3 billion by big companies, including some in the USA. 

Throughout the intervening years, Save Our Water will be there, studying, advocating, and influencing the rest of the world who come to them for advice as they are already doing.  Every local level in every municipality in North America needs a Save Our Water group to protect precious water and battle to ban water as a commodity. There is an urgent cry across nations: access to clean, potable water is a human right.

-Sister Jean Moylan, csj

The Sisters of St. Joseph are proud to be a BLUE COMMUNITY so that we can protect water as a shared commons, sacred gift, and human right.

 www.saveourwater.ca

 Learn about their current campaigns

TAKE ACTION!

Living in the In-Between Time

When I was asked to consider writing a blog from my own experience of living in this ‘in-between time’ I searched the dictionary for the definition of time and discovered words that reflected some of my lived experience during these past months.  

TIME:  the right moment; duration in which all things happen; precise instant that something happens.  

Of course, the daily challenge has been to stop, in the moment, to see what I am learning about the ‘in-between time’ and living that moment as best as I can. 

Moments come each day in our lives such as taking time to greet the cashier at the drug store rather than silently waiting to be checked out, or going over to the Community Centre on Thursdays when day-old bread is available for the residents to pick up and chatting about the weather or how their day is going, or standing on the front porch and chatting with Muriel as she walks her dog Murphy and we chat about all the plants that are coming to life. It seems that time is about presence and being present! 

We often hear and use phrases about time:  time off; time to work; time for holidays; time to go; time for ourselves and there are many more that can be added to this short list. This time of COVID, we have often heard that “we will never return to the way things were – there is something new happening – personally, and collectively – and this in-between time is re-shaping us, our neighborhoods, and the planet.   

I was struck recently when I re-read lines from the Poem – The Dash (by Linda Ellis, 1996), and I have selected a few lines to share. 

I read of a man who stood to speak

at the funeral of a friend 

he referred to the dates on the tombstone

from the beginning to the end. 

He noted that first came the date of birth. 

Then he said what mattered most of all was the dash between the years. 

For that dash represents all the time that was spent alive on earth… 

What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash. 

If we could just slow down enough to consider what is true and real 

And always try to understand the way other people feel. 

And love the people in our lives like we have never loved before. 

If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile. 

Remembering that this special dash might only last a little while. 

Would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?  

What has been your journey living the Dash during these months of COVID?   

-Sister Ann MacDonald, csj

World Environment Day

World Environment Day - June 5, 2021

The dictionary defines environment as the natural world, the surroundings, or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives.

In the Encyclical, Laudato Si, Pope Francis writes ‘The earth herself, burdened and laid waste is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.

The Torah and the Hebrew Scriptures are replete in giving glory for the gift of the Earth.  

• Genesis 1 in the Story of Creation we read, and God saw that it was good.

• Genesis 1:20 Then God said, Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly…

• Deuteronomy 10: 14 To the Lord belongs even the highest heavens; the earth is his also and everything on it.

• Job 38, God asks, Where were you when I made the world? If you know so much, tell me about it…  

• Isaiah 40: 12, Who has cupped in his hand the waters in the sea, and marked off the heavens with a span… 

• Psalm 8: 4 -9, When I see the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you set in place… All sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish in the sea…

The New Testament                                                   

• Matthew 6: 26-29, Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 

• John 15: 5, I am the vine, and you are the branches…                                     

• Romans 8: 22-23, We know that up to the present time all creation is groaning in labor pains…

• Revelation 21:1-5, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth …God’s dwelling is with the human race.  He will dwell with them and they will be his people…

Indigenous Spirituality    

The Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth. We did not weave the web of life we are merely strands in it. - Chief Seattle  

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors we borrow it from our Children.  - Native American Proverb

Muslim Spirituality

Where would we be if Allāh withheld His provisions for us for even a moment? Not just the food, and drink, but everything in the entire universe required to sustain life on earth. If that was paused even for a moment, the consequences would be disastrous.  -Sursh al-Mulk

Hindu Spirituality 

The Earth is our Mother, and we are all her children.  -Ancient Hindu Teaching Ahimsa – the principle of non-violence.  Most Hindus believe that all living things are sacred because they are part of God as is the natural world.

The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of the earth.  

Gardening is active participation in the deepest mystery of the universe. 

-Thomas Berry

“The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.” - David Suzuki

How can something as fundamental as life on Earth be treated with such neglect? We need to completely change the way we treat our home. We, as do all other living beings, deserve the right to a healthy natural world. -Bill McKibben

Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone’s needs but not everyone’s greed. -Mahatma Gandhi

Grown-ups have failed us. We live as if we had the resources of 4.2 planets.  - Greta Thunberg

World Environment Day

Submitted by Sister Ann Marshall, csj

TOGETHER WE CAN BE

 #GENERATIONRESTORATION

We Feel a Largeness Coming On

About three years ago, Commissioner - the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, former senator and co-author of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Report spoke to a packed crowd of us at King’s College Conference Centre in London, Ontario.

After a brief introduction to the talk on reconciliation, he invited all of us to take out our cell phones. I thought initially he was going to ask us to put them on mute. Not so. He asked us to scroll through and find a favorite picture of our child or niece, nephew, or grandchild. He did the same and landed on a picture of his 5-year-old granddaughter. It made him smile. There was a pause in the audience. “Now, he said, I want you to delete the picture.” As you can imagine, no one deleted anything. In a very poignant and stark way, we all got the point. This was the experience of so many indigenous parents whose children “were disappeared” in a variety of ways to the residential school system. Deleted.

None of us knew in that conference hall over three years ago that we would be reading in the newspaper in Canada on May 27, 2021, that 215 bodies of indigenous children were found buried in the yard of a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. Some were as young as three years old. Deleted.

In a conversation with friends the day after the revelation, one of the details that left us saddened and almost without words was the photo of a pair of small handcuffs created specifically for a child’s hands. While it was unspoken, the thought of intentionally handcuffing a small child somehow seemed to capture the cruelty and racism of this part of the Canadian story---past and present. Deleted.

Poet Tracy K. Smith reflects on the experience of racism this past year and a half, “We feel a largeness coming on.” Largeness is not ‘overwhelm’ - since overwhelm can hold us immobile.

During this year-and-a-half of the global pandemic; during this year-and-a-half of continued unmasking of systemic racism in the US and in Canada; during this year-and-a-half of ongoing angst about climate change, there is one question that rises to the surface.

As we carry grief and shock, what is the new story we will commit to creating personally and communally as a country?

Sister Margo Ritchie, Congregational Leader, csj