Exactly 2 weeks ago today, my spouse and I had a serious difference of opinion. We constantly have differences of opinion, but they nearly always end in laughter - John just has that gift of making everything seem light rather than weighty. But this was serious. He was packing for his visit to his parents in Florida, and he'd pulled one of his favourite t-shirts out of the closet. "I can't take this!" he called to me. "It has a stain on it!" I went to look, and sure enough, just under the Canadian flag design there was a yellowish smudge on the white fabric.

Now the interesting thing about this interaction - probably the only interesting thing about it, unless you're fascinated by the day-to-day details of married life - is that, on the face of it at least, it's so uncharacteristic of each of us. John is not (just in case you hadn't noticed) an uptight neatnik with spotless standards of housekeeping (though apparently it's different when it comes to laundry). And as for me, although my standards have slipped WAY way down over the years, so that I'm rather careless about many household details now, I still quite enjoy doing laundry and putting clean items away in their proper drawers and closets. I mention the whole incident only to point out that although I might be more concerned about the state of the kitchen floor after John's cooked a magnificent meal, and he might care more than I would about that little yellow smudge on an old t-shirt, we both take it for granted that cleanliness, however we define it, is (as Martha Stewart would say) a Good Thing - and moreover that water has a big part to play in achieving this cleanliness, even though it may sometimes need a little boost.

In the power blackout three weeks ago, when we were told to gear up for a possible water emergency (though I never was quite sure how the two things were related, unless you lived in a high-rise building that needed power to pump the water) - at that time I found myself being more anxious about lack of water for washing than for drinking. If we were just talking about a few days, I knew there were enough soft drinks and milk and so on around to get us by, but where do you find a substitute for water when it comes to shampooing your hair or taking a shower or doing that ever-essential laundry? And I do mean essential, because although we could certainly learn to use much less water, we can't do without it for the cleansing that is necessary to our health.

We're probably all acquainted with the fact that the dramatic increases in life expectancy which have occurred in the past century or so are largely attributable to improved sanitation, even more than to conquest of particular diseases. Florence Nightingale observed in an 1870 Indian Sanitary Report that "The true key to sanitary progress in cities is: water supply and sewerage", and I don't think anyone now would contradict her. Water, the purifier, is essential to our well-being, both as we drink it and flush toxins out of our bodies, and as we wash ourselves and our clothes and our surroundings to cleanse them of dirt and harmful organisms.

But here's the huge problem. Water plays such an absolutely crucial part in hygiene and sanitation that it's called on to do more than it possibly can. I don't mean just that it can't always cope on its own with getting a stain out of a t-shirt, but that we've sometimes expected it will by itself neutralize or even destroy all the contaminants which come in contact with it. Here's something I read about the beginnings of public sewage systems in Australia:

The use of flush toilets and water to transport wastes was an old idea dating back as far as 2800 BC to the Minoans ... Despite the antiquity of such systems, referred to later as 'water carriage' systems, they were relatively new in nineteenth century Britain and were considered to be a modern, progressive method of dealing with wastes. Sanitary reform was virtually synonymous with sewer construction and Britain provided the model for Australia.

... Because of cost constraints and a certain measure of ignorance, ... most early sewers were [simply] discharged into the nearest watercourse. This rapidly led to the fouling of that watercourse which was generally quite close to the town and often the source of water supply for that town or one downstream. In Sydney it was the Harbour which was polluted and this was considered to be a public health threat because of the 'miasmas' which were coming off the harbour waters and shores.

And in North America, the St. Louis Post Dispatch decried the opening of the city's sewage system in January 1900 with a revision of an old song.

Oh, a wonderful tale of bacilli, all reeking with slathers of slime,
We'd hear if the waters were vocal, and to listen we'd plenty of time;
And the blood in our veins would be frozen, if the innermost truths we should know,
For a terrible tale they would tell us, if the waters could speak as they flow!
Of deaths at the dawn and the twilight, of sickness at morning and noon,
We'd learn, if the current could whisper, of germs that will poison us soon!
Of danger and death and destruction, of weariness, worry and woe,
We'd hear, like the damning of demons, if the waters could speak as they flow!

I guess the paper's editors weren't entirely enthusiastic about this new "water carriage" system of sanitation! And at around the same time, a century ago, as Rhoda Riemer reminded me yesterday, only 14% of the homes in the US had a bathtub. Cleanliness was not as easy as today.

Issues of water management have certainly not gone away, have they? The paradox is in fact more pointed than ever. Water is at one and the same time the purifying cleanser on which we depend for life itself, and one of the greatest potential dangers to our well-being, as anyone who's familiar with the Walkerton disaster knows only too well. We've learned to use water to make dramatic improvements to our health, but we've become so careless about how we treat water that it's now often a serious threat to our health. I'm reminded of that saying attributed to Jesus about another natural element, salt: "If the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is no more good for anything." If the water has lost its purity, it is no more good for anything - and it can do a lot more harm that tasteless salt!

What does this have to do with religion or spirituality? Is it just another call for better water conservation practices and less pollution, such as you might hear from any socially-responsible or civic-minded source? This is the point at which I want to share with you a fairly new but developing interest of mine and invite your help in the future. I've been thinking quite a bit recently about the way water, and cleanliness generally, are used so pervasively as metaphors for inner states, for spiritual health. Let me just suggest a few phrases and themes for you to ponder, which seem to me to make this link:

Christian churches baptise with water as a sign of an inner cleansing - traditionally from original sin, or (seen more liberally) from the innate selfishness or impurity of human nature. We Unitarians usually don't think much of original sin, but we often say at child dedication ceremonies, "With water, the symbol of new life, I touch you ..." , recognizing the power of the symbol.

Macbeth, in Shakespeare's play, says:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No ...
A little later Lady Macbeth says hopefully, "A little water clears us of this deed," but you may remember that she actually has more difficulty than she expected, and moans
"Out, out, damned spot," without any immediate result.

My grandmother used to say to me, when I was a child and had made a mistake of some kind, "Don't worry, it'll all come out in the wash".

A proverb which has lost none of its authority with age: "Don't wash your dirty linen in public."

And finally (for now), a plea to God in the old English Prayer Book: "Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."

Water is, undoubtedly, a powerful metaphor for spiritual cleansing as well as a purifier of the body, when the water is pure in itself. As I've thought about all this, I've begun to question why it is that we Unitarians, who are probably as clean as any group of people in our physical habits, tend to be rather resistant to the concept of cleansing our spirits. Now, it might be that for some of us the physical body, the material, is all there really is, so that "spirit" is meaningless. But even for those, perhaps especially for those, there's great value placed on the mind and thought, and generally on individual personality too. And most of us believe that we're integrated organisms, not separate body and mind or spirit, but one being. Isn't it important to keep our whole being clean, inwardly as well as outwardly, and if so - how might we do that? What is the mental or spiritual equivalent of taking a cleansing and refreshing shower, or of doing the laundry, or of cool water on a wound?

Those are my first few questions, and I have no doubt that they'll lead to others, and if you can help me with either some possible answers or some more questions, I'll be glad to hear from you any time. Maybe eventually I'll write something substantial on the subject -- it might be called Clean and Whole, perhaps, or do you have suggestions for a better title? I'll be delighted if some of you can ponder the topic alongside me, because my own sense is that we do need something like the water of life for our souls. May we be fortunate enough to find it in abundance, pure and uncontaminated; may this be one of the places we find it; may our spirits be refreshed here by living water, always.