Water

E kore te wai, e kore te tangata.

If there's no water, human beings can't exist. The life we depend on can't exist. Water is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. Clean water is surely worth more than diamonds and rubies or all the gold in the world. As they say, it is a taonga.

In my mentioning of water, what issues come to mind for you?

The big one is surely managing water resources for the long term, in our regions in New Zealand and everywhere in the world. In some places the management has to cross national boundaries, and the potential for dispute is even greater than it has been over oil.

To irrigate or not to irrigate? Is irrigation a public health risk? Is this something that can be managed with science? Are we able, as local and regional communities, to agree on the fair use and distribution of water?

What can we afford to do? What can we afford not to do? That is, what will be the price of inaction?

Water is essential to individual life, across the range. With climate variability, and it seems that is only increasing, irrigation is a significant benefit and becomes essential in some situations to keep the garden alive, so to speak. Water is also a resource for producing energy, something it can do alongside feeding plants and animals of all kinds. New Zealand does well by international standards in this.

But clean water is a crucial issue too: the rivers we swam in as youngsters, the creeks that once fed all the families in the valley, the lake that didn't used to smell.

I take heart from the combined efforts of iwi hapu and local government which are slowly but surely having positive effects on the Waikato River and on the Rotorua Lakes. Things can be done. Co-operation. Talk it through together and find common ground; respect and affirm different views and realise it's a complex and interconnected task to move from unhealthy to healthy, from dead water to living water.

Funny how the language starts to sound spiritual. It is spiritual. The Spirit of God, the life-giver, is always involved when previously distrusting people with divergent views start acting together with the common purpose of well-being.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn

Earth Creature

One of the hidden treasures of the Bible lies in its first few chapters. Sadly the Western Church, European based in its thinking, has cast its own shadow over the Bible with a focus on intellect rather than wholeness, individuals rather than community, growth through progress rather than growth through belonging. Enlightenment, modernist eyes, have missed the insights that are truly biblical – human life lived in community and lived in strong connection with the earth from which we come.

I think therefore I am (or nowadays, I shop therefore I am!), that is the best summary of Western thinking. Individuals looking for freedom and autonomy. The Bible has therefore been read as a source of insights into our salvation as individuals, what goes wrong and how we, and God, can make it right.

But in truth at its heart is a richer message, and remember that the Bible as Jesus knew it was not the Bible as seen through Western eyes. If we want to hook up to the faith of Jesus, we need to look deeper into what the Bible actually says.

In the beginning...the foundation of our being human, indeed the foundation of all that exists actually existing, is a creator. That is, life is a gift and as Genesis tells it comes as wind and breath. Hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2) and breathing into what becomes the human creature (Genesis 2:7).

Every time I stand at a graveside, the spirit of those texts – the Hebrew meaning of them – is acutely present to me. Regularly I share it at the moment of lowering and I see faces turn and listen, I see hearts stirred, particularly among Māori, but not exclusively so. From my own heritage I found these Hebrew origins of the text finally help me make sense of this creation narrative, and find it relevant and powerful for life in our era.

Adam translates into English as “human being” (not “man” except in the now out-of-date sense of “embracing man and woman”). What's more, and this is the heart of it, Adam means earth creature.

The Lord God forms Adam from the dust of the adamah, which means the soil, specifically the nutrient-rich top soil.

That's who we are. Earth with life breathed into it. Earth creature who then, as the narrative continues, finds need for community with other humans, along this belonging with the earth and its other creatures.

So if you take delight pottering around with the soil, and if you find it strangely settles and refreshes you, don't be surprised. Indeed, whenever we feel that connection with world and creatures other than ourselves, and we find it restores us somehow, then we are simply being who we are.

Gifted life in community, with people and with the earth.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom, Robyn