Letter from Clare

It will come as no surprise to most of you that the Sanders family are once again off to Iona for their summer holiday. In the early days when we first went there, some 17 or 18 years ago, the water came from Loch Stonaig on the island. It was good peaty water and at bath time you didn’t know what was dirt and what was just water, but it tasted wonderful and it made the best cup of tea. Then progress supposedly came along in the shape of an EEC directive which said the water wasn’t up to EEC standards and at a cost of mega bucks a pipe was laid underneath the Sound of Iona, so that water could be piped over from Mull. This water was purified and the first year it just didn’t taste right and so each day, several times a day we would take our jugs and go and fill them up at the well on the croft, which was pure and unadulterated and tasted wonderful.

That experience of collecting water from the well lodged deep within me, and after several holidays in the Isles of Scilly was further re in forced, for there is no natural water supply on St. Martins, that although we moan about the rain, especially this summer, we do take water for granted. For our brothers and sisters across the world, the reality of daily living is very different. A child dies every 8 seconds from water born disease. Only 15% of the world’s population have the luxury of water on tap. All over the world the demand for water continues to grow, global water consumption is now 10 times greater than it was in 1900.

At a recent Children’s Church service we reflected on the gift of water. We thought about God who is often likened to water, the God who is precious, the God who is spoken of as a wellspring, the God who challenges us to let justice flow like a river and a stream. We placed coins in a prayer well, not a wishing well, and some of us determined to begin a collection of small coins, such as may be dropped into a wishing well, and to use them to support water projects across the world.

During our holidays we will no doubt enjoy water to splash in and swim in, we will drink considerable quantities in order to keep cool (the recommended is 2 litres a day in hot weather) and many of us will appreciate the beauty of water in lake, loch, waterfall, sea and possibly puddle and rainbow. Could you start a prayer well and drop your small change in so that by Harvest we might be enabled to make a donation as a thanksgiving for our holidays and for the gift of water on tap?

Enjoy your holiday, wherever it might take you.

Clare