7.18.2022
[Pharresia] focuses on Philosophy, Culture, Tech, Theology, and more. The content stems from original pieces, curated links, and the occasional podcast.
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Newsletter. Last week’s Newsletter can be found below, as well as some of the things I’ve been reading lately:
Notes on Water
It’s around 2:00 AM and I reach the nightstand for the glass of water I poured before going to bed. The water has warmed up to room temperature and the taste is mute but nevertheless refreshing to my parched mouth. Feeling unsatisfied with this quarter of a cup that I had left for myself I begrudgingly force myself out of bed and to the kitchen. The walk through the house is stereotypically liminal, as all the creatures that run amock during the day are fast asleep and the shallow street light pours in to fill the room with a tinge of color to make out the living room fixtures.
When I make it to the fridge, opening the door overloads my eyes with the fridge’s light. In hindsight, this is better as I don’t need to turn on the harsh white LED lightbulb installed in our kitchen, and I can use this outpour of light to get a new glass. I pour water into the cup from the Brita and drink as if I’m to revitalize myself with some sort of shamanic elixir.
As I feel this water, which is substantially colder than the one that I had in the room, I notice that it actually makes my mouth feel less dry and it cools my insides as it rushes down. This sensation almost feels like a surge of purity, like a shock not only to my body but to something else…
Water has always had a complex and rich significance to culture and societies at large. Many of the great ancient civilizations and empires fixed themselves near a river as their primary way to obtain water. Water is always multi-functional, not just for irrigation, but for washing, for bathing, and most importantly for drinking.
It is for this reason that historically water has held a very divine status. Not only because clean potable water is a scarce resource, but because water in its not drinking form is overwhelmingly abundant.
Most of the earth is covered in water, in many creation myths, the primary “surface” of the earth is the chaotic waters, from which everything emerges.
"Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.
Water signifies “flux” or potential, a flow that is not yet fully formed. Water always flows downstream and the many complex runoff systems connect like the network that allows this newsletter to be read online.
Water is that which is untamed but when tapped into creates a reservoir of potential, it is infinitely tied with vitality, and often associated with eternity and life.
“One evening a girl named Rebecca was drawing water from a well for her family’s meal and for their animals, as she did every evening, when Isaac appeared in the form of an intermediary, his servant, a traveler parched with thirst. Another girl, named Rachel, was likewise drawing water at a wellhead when Jacob appeared, thirsty as well. Each one drank from the pitcher that the girl offered him; each one took the girl who offered him water as his wife. From the love radiated by these wells there came a posterity as dense as the crown of a beech tree.
Many generations later, in the same fashion, a Samaritan woman met the Son of Man at another such wellhead. Jesus said to her: our ancestors drank this water and died; I will give you to drink the water of eternal life. From this well, in which water was transubstantiated into ambrosia, there radiated the resurrection of the dead.” - Michel Serres, Religion
We have forgotten our relationship to water, and instead of seeing it as that which is unifying and sacred, we see it as another disposable commodity.
~Podcast ~
~Links~
“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
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-C.N.