To Walk with Saints and Scholars

Today is the day tradition tells us to celebrate the baptism of Jesus (the holy man) in the Jordan (holy water). Today is all about the sanctity of water.

Water is free in Ireland. It is also very noisy. And that is why it has so much to teach us.

Think about it. Water – the thing our Earth is made of…the stuff our bodies are made of – is free here. It costs nothing. For me, this makes perfect sense. Nothing feels more right than that a gift of nature is commodified only if being used for capital gain. I remember with great clarity the moment my 18-year-old self got my first water bill and realized that water was not, in fact, free in Texas. Aghast is an understatement. How could my financial health be the arbiter of whether or not I could get what my body needs to survive? I know now I was a privileged, under-educated sass of a girl who was completely unaware that people all over the world have no access to water due to geography, socio-economics, political realities and more. But I was a youngster in Texas where it is regularly over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and so it felt morally wrong that I would have to pay for my water. And it feels morally right to me that, in Ireland, water is free for home consumption and use. I can feel that rightness in my bones as I look out on the abundance I see around me. Water is holy here precisely because it is everywhere. Earth has provided, human hands have prepared, may it become for us our spiritual refreshment, and may it be offered our eternal gratitude. Maybe even aloud.

Because water in Ireland is also loud. It talks all the time. Step outside, and you hear it; go for a hike, and you hear it; stand on the shore of any lake and all the coastline, and you hear it. And the reason it talks nonstop is that it never…stops…moving. Every drop of water on this island is on a constant trek back to the Source. Every drop. And that movement at every moment in a place with so many drops at once all the time is audible. You can hear the water making its way back to what matters. You can hear it as it never stands still – never stagnates. Where I am in the Southwest of Ireland, we got 71 inches of rain in 2025. That is almost six feet of rain over the year. And all that water hits this mountainous and rocky terrain and immediately begins moving back to where it came from…back to where it belongs.

To be sure, it is not untouched or unchanged by all it experiences along the way. It moves past sheep and shrubs, and it picks up the detritus (poop) of each. It absorbs particles of peat and turns a deep chocolate brown for its troubles. It passes through water tables and lakes and gets renamed and remade a hundred times over. And it always, still, and ever makes it way to its Source. Water has hardships and adventures on the way, but water never forgets its way to what matters. Water is holy because it knows things we all would do well to know. It knows movement is all there is. And water gives itself to flow. It does not fight to stay put or to stay singular; it does not attempt to remain unchanged or clean. It chatters and whines and comments and complains – you can hear it! And it gives itself to the movement back to where it comes from nonetheless. Water is holy because it knows the way home.

And then there are the rainbows….