The Power of Water
With the death toll from the tsunami at 160,000 and counting I don't think the people in the region need to be convinced of the power of water.
In Lampasas, Texas there is a little golf course that straddles the banks of Sulphur Creek. When I was a child, my grandfather was the pro at this golf course and also ran the municipal swimming pool that was there. The pool was approximately Olympic sized but not rectangular. It was filled from a spring that also fed Sulphur Creek. The water bubbled from the ground and it was COLD. When you swam in the pool, it would only be three or four minutes until your lips and fingernails turned blue. We didn't put chlorine in the water, we drained the whole pool once a week and refilled it. The water was free.
When I was around ten years old I would spend summers with my grandparents who lived in an apartment which was on the second floor of the clubhouse building overlooking the pool. One year there were heavy rains. This happens on occasion in Central Texas. There was enough rain to turn Sulphur Creek from a crystal clear spring creek into the muddy torrent of a flood creek. The waters rose to about six feet deep in the second floor apartment.
One of my uncles was the local doctor and lived about a mile up the road from the park. When the waters subsided they found my uncle's ten foot long deep freezer in the swimming pool still full of venison. Water is powerful. You can drown in a half cup of it. I can barely imagine a twenty foot tall wave moving as fast as a freight train carrying refrigerators and cars and dead bodies and small houses.
If you are a disaster film buff, this one has it all. The movie opens with pastoral underwater shots of colorful fish lazily cruising on a coral reef and then a rumble as the camera shakes and the sea floor tears itself apart. Cut to carefree tourists on a sunny beach and pan to bucolic native fishermen towing their nets off the coast and villagers in their serene and daily activities next to the shore. Then ominous music as we see a helicopter shot of the twenty foot ripple spreading in the Indian Ocean, spreading, spreading, noiseless, relentless, like a sinister curtain. Industrial Lights and Magic takes over now with the killer special effects-- noise and deluge and eighty mile per hour aqua terror washing across cities and landscapes sweeping away lives and ships and generations like a biblical video game. And that's just the first twenty minutes of the movie. Think Spielburg here. For two more hours you get to see scenes of carnage and destruction, mud and hunger everywhere and then the heroic survivor stories and the warm and fuzzy of the relief efforts and the outpouring of charity. There are subplots of evil do, screenshots of bloggers all over the world talking about underwater nuclear tests by India or Pakistan or geological theories that the quake was caused by pumping all the oil from Arabian sand. It's the perfect disaster flick. Don't worry, you'll be able to see it in your local theater next year. Drip, drip, water is powerful.
In the first few days after the disaster the White House was mute. George Bush wasn't snoozing in front of the bowl games with a belly full of free range turkey like everybody assumed. High level sources tell this reporter that the White House Staff was embroiled in policy making. The wires were alive with video conferencing. They had to decide whether to send relief or to declare War on Water.
On January 4, Tom DeLay offered this in the Congressional Prayer Meeting.
Saith DeLay:
So, you can see what a quandary the neo-cons were in. Was this disaster just fair retribution for worshipping the wrong god? After all, most of the victims were Muslim. They read up on their Genesis. But you can't take Moses' word and after all Abraham was part Muslim, wasn't he?A reading of the Gospel, in Matthew 7:21 through 27.
Not every one who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?
"Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you: depart from me, you evil doers.'"
Everyone who listens to these words of mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man, who built his house on a rock:
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse; it has been set solidly on rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine, but does not act on them, will be like a fool who built his house on sand:
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined."
So, at last we come to the water of Baptism. Just a little dab will do ya. If the heathens would have been Baptized with a few drops then they wouldn't have had to endure full immersion. Say DeLay.
The Poet's Eye sees that the most powerful water in the tsunami zone in the near future will be clean drinking water. In bottles. Call me Evian. Is that naive spelled backwards?
You've got to prime the pump. You must have faith and believe. You've got to give of yourself 'fore you're worthy to receive.
Drink all the water you can hold. Wash your face to your feet. Leave the bottle full for others. Thank you kindly, Desert Pete.---Kingston Trio.
