LAUSR

Water is crucial to life and to living. All human bodies contain water (45–60 percent of female bodies, and 50–65 percent of the male bodies), and no human can survive without water. Daily food is vital, as Jesus taught us, but daily drink is basic. Sadly, not all human beings have the same access or privilege to potable water. The world’s springs and streams of pure water are bottled and sold for the profit and pleasure of the financially rich, while poor people scoop up contaminated wells and streams. Evidently, we do not drink from the same well. Water is everywhere––on land, under the ground, in the sky and the sea. About 71 percent of planet earth’s surface is covered by water, and 96.5 percent of the world’s water is in the oceans. All living creatures with skin, hair, scale, or leaves need water to live, whether on, above, or under the surface. Water gives and sustains life, but a major part of the planet’s bodies of water have been troubled. How might awareness of the planet’s “troubled waters” impact the way we use and think of water as symbol? Water is in places of worship as well, in the rituals of purification, initiation, admission, and adoption of Snanam (Hindu), Netilat Yadayim (Judaism), Wu : d u’ (Islam), and baptism (Christianity). Indigenous and local religions, old and new, also have water rituals. They, too, are holy events and are conducted in contexts where water is troubled. Arising from these observations is the question: What is the impact of context (troubled waters) on religious (holy) rituals? i reflect on this question from Pasifika, where nuclear weapon tests and global warming trouble our water world, and with regard to baptism, one of two sacraments celebrated in Siasi U esiliana Tau‘at aina ‘o Tonga (SUTT, Methodist Church in Tonga), my home church. i focus on my context and church and invite readers to find echoes and tensions within their own contexts and traditions.