Using up the Water of Salvation
All the world is searching for salvation. We need to eat and drink in order to survive. Beyond that, we need to be at peace with our neighbors. If these conditions are not met, we are liable to become stressed. These seem to be self-evident truths. But our human efforts to achieve even these basic conditions appear to be failing. The global climate is changing faster than we can control. Resources of oil, gas and minerals are being depleted at an increasing rate, as a result of the application of the ill-conceived, illogical and irreligious Keynesian system of economics, which suggests that the simple solution to economic overspending is to increase turnover further and faster than before. So resources disappear still quicker. Even humble water, apparently, is being extracted from the earth in such a profligate manner, that this resource too will soon be prohibitively expensive to produce, and people will die from enforced fasting.
This is a punishment for sin, but the sin is happening, not through malice, but ignorance.
In the rich farmlands of the American Middle West, and even more so in the dusty deserts of California and the Middle East, groundwater is extracted from the underlying aquifers which has taken decades, even centuries, to accumulate by slow penetration, drop by drop through the reluctantly porous bedrock. It is being extracted at a speed which beggars belief, so much is it faster than the rate at which that water accumulated. It feeds the crops that are grown there, it supports huge herds of cattle stock and feeds entire countries. But it cannot be replaced in our generation. The amount of water in the global system does not change: it evaporates, it joins the clouds, and falls again as rain – somewhere else. Floods here; drought there. For as long as the system works, everyone is happy; everyone makes a profit – for a while. When the shallow aquifer is exhausted, the management drill deeper wells to older horizons; at greater expense, inevitably, but prolonging the performance of the established system. One day, there will be no more water to drill, and at that point the only moisture available will be tears of remorse.
We have sinned, O Lord, we have sinned.
At this point, will we turn to the God of our forefathers and ask his help? Or, in our ignorance, will we still be searching for profitable alternatives that take no account of ethical considerations laid out by United Nations agencies for environmental and human rights? Who listens to them anyway? Certain areas of the world are congenitally prone to conflict, specially over access to fuel and water resources. The maps coincide: Middle East, subsaharan Africa, southern and eastern Europe, northern India, etc. All of these have hidden aquifers which have been critically depleted. Shortage of supplies results in hostilities. Are we ready to move on, to change our priorities, to love our neighbors as ourselves? Even more urgently, are we ready to do this by choice rather than by fatwa? Only by exercising our individual and collective freedom are we going to achieve the salvation we are seeking, the one promised by the original Savior who gave his life to show us by example supreme charity.
Lord send us the wisdom that we need. Show us your mercy, as we acknowledge our foolishness. Lighten our darkness. And O men, when will you listen? Harden not your hearts.
St Paul said that the wages of sin is death. But the punishment for this sin – against mankind, against creation, against the living humanity to which all of us belong – is a death meted out not by the familiar biblical Father, but by nature herself, reacting in an entirely natural way to the abuse we are giving her. We are not used to putting these two value sets alongside one another, religious and political. Each has its own taboos; so to talk of them together is even more blasphemous. But until we do, we are unquestionably on the path to Armageddon. To make peace with Mother Nature we have to make a totally concerted effort; we cannot afford to let anyone become the scapegoat, because blaming any member of the human race is to blame the entire collective of humanity. This is everybody's problem. It's our own fault, and we don't only need help from above, but a genuine show of inner character, if we are going to go on drawing the waters of salvation.
Peace in our time. Peace, or death. Our choice.
“Alec”
Global Water Storage Map (NASA: GRACE) showing anomalies over the last two decades https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004300/a004338/grace_world_anom_print.jpg
Blue = more retained rainfall
Red = groundwater drawdown, icemelt
(main supposed causes)
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