"Let us bless the humility of water,/ Always willing to take the shape/ Of whatever otherness holds it…" – John O'Donohue – To Bless the Space Between Us – A Book of Blessings (2008)
Millions of children are, at this moment, attending summer camp. In spite of the dining hall food and insect attacks, I hope you have had this experience.
In the summer of 1956, our YMCA counselor took us for a forest hike. Deep into our journey he stopped. "Listen up!" he instructed.
We tilted our ears. "Do you hear it?" he challenged.
We listened again. This time we heard it. Soon, we saw the water, bubbling a few inches into the air and landing in the small pond formed by its fountain.
"It's an artesian well," he told us. "It runs clear forever. No pumping needed. It's a gift from God."
"Can we drink it?" I asked, already trained to doubt.
"You'll never drink anything cleaner," he replied.
"Let us bless the grace of water," O'Donohue wrote, "The imagination of the primeval ocean/ Where the first forms of life stirred/ And emerged to dress the vacant earth/ with warm quilts of color."
Water, like all of nature, is a powerful teacher. We swim in it. We drink in it. We cool off in it. And we can drown in it.
O'Donohue reminds us that water "takes the shape of whatever otherness holds it." And he tells us this is humility.
Imagine the humility you, as a caregiver, have to adopt to accommodate the multitude of demands that surround you each day. How do you "take the shape" of the ill who come to you? For in taking their shape, your empathy will open your heart to their discomfort.
Do we have the strength to absorb the pain of others while simultaneously treating it?
Many believe this is how Jesus healed. His Love for lepers brought God's healing to their bodies. His grace enabled the blind to see. His compassion enabled him to raise one from death itself.
Ultimately, Love merged Jesus' mortal life with ours. He died so that we might know that Love heals our thirst far beyond anything an artesian well might do.
Jesus offered us "living water." It is forever there for us to drink each day.
-Reverend Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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