The announcement came July, 2008. Now, of course, it is old news. There is, by golly, water UP THERE on the surface of Mars! "Water ice" anyway.
Why does Mars water matter? If there is water, maybe there is life? And water is magic. We may go from "dust to dust" but we start in the womb's water. Water is so essential that it is the first thing caregivers know patients must have to survive.
Jesus-as-teacher understood water-as-metaphor so well that the parable of the "Woman at the Well" became famous. From it flows the beautiful image of "living water." John 4:13-14 quotes Jesus, “Everyone who drinks this [real] water will be thirsty again, (14) but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst."
The neurosurgeon, Ebon Alexander, whom I have quoted recently writes heaven's water "...is closer to the source...like the water higher up on the meandering river is closer to the springs that emerge." And it exists, he says, in the heaven he saw, as incredibly comforting.
A sacred gift my mother received at the end of her 105-year earth journey was being bathed daily by hospice staff. Afterwards she always returned with a glow as if baptized again.
Caregivers become healers when they understand how waters can comfort suffering. The question is not whether there is water on Mars but do we understand water's transcendent power on earth.
Water is magic. With "living water" we never thirst again.
-Erie Chapman
Photograph: Erie Chapman "Ghost Falls Impression" 2018
