Celebrate World Water Day

March 22, 2009 is World Water Day.  This holiday calls attention to our freshwater supply and encourages people to live within their water budget and thus avoid creating a water deficit.  Visit the World Water Day page on Bloggers Unite for more ideas about activities.

History and Future

The first World Water Day was celebrated in 1993.  It grew out of a United Nations conference on environmental issues held in 1992.  The conference formed some recommendations on how to conserve and use fresh water.  World Water Day would thus give people an opportunity to work on those recommendations and set activities raising awareness of water.

In 2005, World Water Day launched a Decade of Action focused on “Water for Life.”  The UN hopes that this unfolding venture will expand people’s access to clean water.  Water and sanitation play a major role in improving health and living conditions.  They also support the environment.  Projects to protect and purify water make important investments in our future.

Water-Sharing

The ritual of water-sharing was first described in the science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.  In the novel, water was very scarce on Mars, so sharing it with someone marked a very close kinship.  A human character raised by Martians then brought the custom to Earth as one of the sacraments of the Church of All Worlds.

Inspired by some of the novel’s cultural ideas, a group of people banded together and formed the Church of All Worlds, one of the oldest Neo-Pagan churches — it was officially recognized as such in 1968.  CAW has continued to grow and spread, developing many rituals and traditions.  You can see some of them in books such as Creating Circles & Ceremonies: Rituals for All Seasons And Reasons and Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal.

The water-sharing ritual has evolved into multiple forms.  One version is sharing a chalice of water.  The nonfiction book Creating Circles and Ceremonies includes a water-sharing ritual that takes place in a pool of water.  Another version involves everyone bringing a container of water from somewhere meaningful to them, mixing the waters in a common container, and then taking out some of the blended water (which makes excellent Pagan holy water).

What You Can Do

1. Learn where your water comes from.
2. Read about water conservation.
3. Donate to an organization involved in water conservation.
4. Xeriscape your yard.
5. Clean up a local river.
6. On March 22, write a blog post about water!