HEADWATERS @ IW

I'm happy to say there are a few echoes in this Preface with the Pope's Encyclical on the Environment, released today.  This piece brings his message home about our human relationship to creation -- especially in this special place at the head of the San Antonio River that has been entrusted to our care... More reflections to come on the Pope's powerful message.

PREFACE

The Water & Culture Reader (2011)

Fountainhead Press, compiled & edited by UIW English Department

                                                               

At the Congregational home of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word (San Antonio) is a famous artesian spring known as the San Antonio Spring, or more commonly the Blue Hole.  To indigenous peoples, the springs were called Yanaguana, which in the Coahuiltecan language of these earliest Texans means Spirit Waters, or up-flowing waters of the Spirit.  Native American creation stories describe how Yanaguana rose up giving birth to all Creation.  The Spirit Waters were the source of all being, which helps explain why Yanaguana is the most oft sung word in the Native American Church.

 

According to early accounts, this great spring was once a fountain spring rising many feet in the air.  Gunnar Brune in his definitive book, The Springs of Texas, ranked the San Antonio Springs 6^th largest among the Great Springs of Texas.  Other Great Springs include Comal Springs in New Braunfels, San Marcos Springs in San Marcos, and Barton Springs in Austin, all of which were also described as fountain springs. 

Gary Perez, custodian of Native American Church Trust in Mirando City (the peyote “Gardens”) has found these same four fountain springs depicted in a rock wall painting known as the White Shaman Panel located in the Lower Pecos.  This would put these Great Springs on a 4,000 year old map of Texas. 

All the Great Springs of Texas – the Spirit Waters -- issue from a common water source, the vast Edwards Aquifer, that flows underground along the Balcones Escarpment from west of Del Rio to north of Austin.  They all rise up into life-giving rivers around which human communities have formed over thousands of years.  

Evidence of human presence in the headwaters of these rivers suggests that Paleo-Indians were drawn to these springs nearly 12,000 years ago, signifying the importance of these deeply spiritual water places to early human civilizations.  History shows that humans have occupied the area around these Great Springs ever since.

In relatively recent times, but before the drilling of artesian wells in the late 1800’s, Frederick Law Olmstead of Central Park fame visited the San Antonio Springs and described in 1857 how “the whole river gushes up in one sparkling burst from the earth . . . The effect is overpowering.  It is beyond your possible conceptions of a spring.” 

1764 Map of San Antonio showing the 

San Antonio Spring as the source (labelled Ojo de Aqua at far left)

The San Antonio Springs were thought to be “the source” of the San Antonio River, or as William Corner wrote in 1890, “the key to the situation, the Ojo de Agua, the birthright of the city.”  Today the population of San Antonio and the other Great Springs cities along the edge of the Balcones Escarpment is in the millions, and growing fast.  All who live in this region are dependent on water from the same source aquifer, the Edwards Aquifer, riddled now with thousands of artesian wells that artificially draw the ancient sacred waters out of the ground for mostly human consumption, use – and waste.

Whether you see these Great Springs pragmatically and hydrologically as the headwaters of rivers that became the lifeblood of thriving cities, or as Yanaguana – up-flowing Waters of the Spirit, Source of all Creation -- these Great Springs have had enormous cultural and spiritual significance to people over many thousands of years: pre-historic First Americans, Spanish explorers, early European settlers, citizens of the 21^st century.  But what of the future?

While the Blue Hole and much of the San Antonio River headwaters are now “protected” in the 53-acre Headwaters Sanctuary (created in 2008 by the Incarnate Word Sisters who have lived in the headwaters since 1897), there is little doubt the San Antonio Springs are endangered.

Sadly, today, and plain for all to see, the Blue Hole is dry.  This “overpowering” spring has not flowed since 2011.  Exceptional drought and more disturbingly a growing human population dependent on groundwater withdrawals have literally sucked dry this once prolific spring.  The Blue Hole -- lifeblood of the city with the river running through it – has at least for now retreated into the dark womb of the Earth from which it came. 

What might this tell us about the condition of our human relationship to the Earth and Earth’s resources on which we depend for our very survival?  What might it tell us about the state of our human relationship to the rest of Creation? 

Today, 2.5 billion people live in countries with moderate to severe water stress.  Over 1 billion people lack access to clean water.  2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation.  

Waterborne infectious diseases claim 3.2 million lives every year, about 6% of all deaths globally. 

Over 3 billion people -- almost half the world’s population -- live on less than $2.50 a day, and 80% live on less than $10. One in two children live in poverty and are far more likely to suffer the ravages of dysentery and preventable diseases.  21,000 die every day, mostly from hunger and related causes.

As Earth’s climate is undeniably and devastatingly altered, and as Earth’s life-giving, life-sustaining resources are extracted and consumed by the world’s ever growing population... 

...as the Earth itself is crying out for relief at our hands...

...we must wake up and embrace the reality that ecology, peace and justice are inseparable, and that we will not have peace and justice in the world until we have healthier, more resilient ecosystems.  And we won’t have healthier, more resilient ecosystems until we, the human species, learn to live in right relationship with the Earth, with all Creation. 

When water is unfit to drink, air is unfit to breathe, soils wash out to sea, landfills leak toxins, forests disappear, species go extinct, oceans inundate coastal zones, agriculture fails, habitat fragments, hurricanes terrorize, rock formations “frack,” when wars are fought over oil and increasingly over water, we must conclude that the Earth and our relationship to it is horribly out of balance.  How are we to face these seemingly overwhelming challenges of the 21^st century?  It’s easy to despair, to turn our thoughts to technological fixes.

But we mustn't despair, despite the evidence, or look only to science and technology for answers.  As we endlessly debate and seek political solutions, as we innovate and create new technologies, as we learn to cooperate and pool our global resources, each of us must also attend to that underlying spiritual challenge, asking ourselves how we are going to live in sustainable relationship with the Earth and each other.  How must we live to be in right relationship with the Earth, and all creation?  How can we heal this broken relationship that gives rise to so much suffering and injustice?  

I'm now convinced that wrestling with these questions is a matter for the human heart, and it is the work of the Spirit that dwells within and among us and all Creation.   

Are we listening?

Are we alive? Alive enough to care?  

Will we respond?! 

Here’s a thought:  Go find your patch of the Earth, and “dig in.”  For the Earth’s sake, and for your own.  If you are open to it, you will find food for the soul, and spiritual sustenance from working the land respectfully, working to care for the Earth.  You will show others the way. Take seriously all the many ways we each can use less energy and water, create less trash, teach our children, let them teach us, and become more mindful of the needs of others, in both our local and global community.

The Headwaters at Incarnate Word is a place in time and space, as well as a sanctuary for nature, people, and spirit. It is a place to enjoy, to be alone in nature, or not.  It is a place to tend the Earth and tend our relationship to it. 

It is place to teach the children.

With healing hands and loving hearts, people are nursing this sacred place to ecological health, and in our own little, localized way, we are restoring right relationship within ourselves, with the Earth, and all creation.  We are paying tribute to Yanaguana, place of the up-flowing Spirit Waters.  And praying for the rains that will give life again to these sacred springs....praying that all of us will learn to live well with less, especially water.   

We are clearly being called to WAKE UP!  Let’s not turn a deaf ear.  Instead, let’s:

Tend to the Spirit that moves through all Creation.  

Tend to the Earth.

Tend to each other.

Evolve.

For if we do not, we humans may pass from this earth as surely as the dinosaurs.  
Nature will have her way.

Believe in the ultimate resilience of Nature.  Believe in the resilience of Us.

 

Engage in cultural (r)evolution.  

Emulate the self-healing capacities of Mother Earth.  

Embody hope.

And know this simple truth in every aqueous cell of your being:

 

Water is life.  Aqua es vida.  Maji ni uhua.  水是生命