The good people at Sea World are opening a water park. It opens in 22 days from the writing of his letter.

Its going to feature huge waterslides and river tubing. There will also be one waterslide that drops you into a glass tube that actually goes underwater where the dolphins can swim right up to the glass.

First you have to wonder what the dolphins are thinking. They swim up to the glass tube and think:

“Hmmmmmm. I wonder what this thing is? I don’t think I’ve ev…WHOOOAA WHAT THE HECK

WAS THAT?? “

Eventually the dolphins are just going to hang out by the glass tube saying “That lady should NOT be wearing a two piece.”

I’m not huge water park person. I went to one about 25 years ago. (This was when waterslides were made out of concrete)  My brother and I took my grandfather on the slide. Okay, now, picture a man shaped like Mike, the little green monster from MONSTERS INC. Got it? Give him badly dyed jet black hair and a Speedo. THAT’S my grandfather. He used to mow his lawn in the same outfit only with dress shoes.

You have to give the man credit. He was in his sixties the first time he did a waterslide. This was a park in PA that had four slides and it cost $3 to get in. My brother and I took grandpa up the stairs and we made a train and went down. We hit the bottom, Brian (my brother) and I stood up and could not find my grandfather. He finally came up sputtering and spitting and once he got his breath back he said, “I paid 3 dollars for THAT?”

He later said it was probably what a cockroach felt like being flushed down a toilet.

I used to laugh that we had a Sear World park in Ohio. I’ll give you a moment….a SEA world in OHIO.

We are creatures of water. Our bodies are mostly water. Our planet is mostly water. If you believe certain scientists then we all came from the water. As I said, I’m not a water park person but I love the ocean. I think the ocean is a great place to pray. When I was younger and took swimming lessons I used to practice holding my breath for as long as I could so I could stay on the bottom of the deep end for as long as possible. Have you ever done that? Breath out the air in your lungs and just hold yourself in the silence of the water on the bottom. We spend the first nine months we exist swimming in water. I think water will be our connection with each other, globally. Eventually we’re going to have to stop fighting and learn to live with each other and I believe our connection will be water. When we run out of space up here, I think its more likely we will find a way to live in the water rather than outer space. If we ever have a relationship with whatever else is out there in the universe I think its going to be based on water. I think water will be part of the solution to our energy problems.

There was once a woman who was so despised by the rest of her community that she could not even go the well when everyone else did. She had to wait until the worst part of the day and when no one else was around to go and fill her water jar. Jesus met her. (Notice that Jesus didn’t show up when everyone else did but when the woman who nobody else liked did.) He referred to himself as “living water”.

Water is how we should function as a church. Like a wave passing through a town we need to get in every crack and touch every thing and every one. When we welcome each other into this body of Christ, this living water body that’s made up of mostly water…we do so with baptism…with water. I read once that this entire universe is just swimming around in the water drop in the corner of God’s eye. (Okay now we’re into Horton Hears a Who territory so let’s wrap this up.)

Water is what connects us, to our past, our future, each other, our origins, our God and our savior.

Too often we live life and love and our faith as if we were swimming around looking for water.

It’s all around us. Its part of us. It is who we are. It is our connection. Stop looking around for what is so close to you that it’s literally in your skin.

Absorb.