Water

Years ago we bought a big lot with a little tiny house on it. It’s only source of water was a well. At first we were thrilled, feeling all self reliant, loving the thought of long showers and rainbird sprinklers that would make that lovely ch-ch-ch sound I could listen to all afternoon long in the middle of a hot summer day. I must admit I used to really worry about drinking water that came straight out of the ground, even though it passed all the tests when we took samples into a local lab. I would lie there in bed at night and imagine that we all became medical mysteries due to strange chemical agents in our water. Maybe one of my kids would grow an eleventh finger, or another would have super powers they would use to terrify the others into doing their Saturday chores. Wait, that would have meant the chores actually got done, which would have been totally awesome.

Anyway, one morning I got up and set an appointment with someone who could come out and talk to me about putting a filter on the water from our well. This gentleman and I sat at the counter in my kitchen where I announced that I wanted to filter every ounce of the water that came into my house and I wanted the highest level of filtration possible. He said, “Actually, you don’t”.

What? Here was a chance for him to make some bucks and for me to quit picturing my children with extra ears! He explained that the purer the water, the more aggressive the water would be. It turns out that water, filled with the usual minerals, is content to just sit in pipes and do nothing. He said that if we filtered out all of the impurities from the water, no matter what those pipes were made out of, the pure water would work away at the material and eventually the pipes would break down and leak. I thanked him half heartedly and went to Costco and bought a water filtering pitcher that I used for two weeks.

I have thought about that principle a lot though, about how the purer the water is the less content it is to just sit there. I have noticed that in some of my favorite people. I seems like the more pure their hearts are, the more active they are in doing good. They just get in there and break down those barriers, washing over the lives of folks with kindness. Not water like a tsunami, but quiet and constant, refreshing in that life giving way that water can be. Okay, enough with the water analogies, but now I wish it were warm enough outside to go turn on the sprinklers.