On a recent trip to Arizona I heard a longtime resident say, "Once they added water to this desert so many came."

   Just add water. It sounded like a recipe for life.

   No water, no living Earth. Is there water on Mars? If so, there might be (or might have been) life. 

   To make the sacred human form come alive, add water. We start life in the fluid of our mother's womb. Seventy-five percent of an infant's body is water.

   All of life needs water. We need it for cleanliness. We need it to slake thirst. Immerse yourself in water and you feel the comfort of its buoyancy.

   Gaze at a river, lake or ocean and wonder why it is that those ripples, that transparency and those waves are so fascinating. Water is part of sacred ritual. Many are baptized in it. 

   And there is rain. The mist. The particles that make up the mystery that is fog. And the snow that crystallizes it.

   Above all, water is a spiritual image. Jesus spoke of faith in God as living water.

  For caregivers like the nurses I spoke to in Phoenix water represents the ebb and flow of their calling. Sometimes, they feel as though they are drowning in work. Other times, they sail through their days, their sails filled with winds of hope.

   Of course, we need water's companion, oxygen. Too often, caregivers are out of breath, suffocating under the never-ending flow of people in deep need.

   Breathe in God's air. Bathe today in the clear water of hope. Drink the living water of Love and never be thirsty again.

 -Erie Chapman

 Photographs by Dane Dakota