By Leila Kincaid
June 11th 2022
It’s raining again, today. The rain comes a lot when you live on the Southern Oregon coast. You can depend on it. In between the coastal fog and sunny days, rain slips in and graces the land with its nourishing waters. Not everyone on the planet has access to water, let along clean water, let alone water falling from the sky to grow crops and clear the air. Not everyone can hear the rain.
A glaring problem with our world today is that I cannot sit here in my home and hear the rain without being aware that others cannot hear it, are dying of thirst, or famine from unwatered crops, or they do not have access to clean water or water at all. My own privilege and pleasure is held up against the lack for others and this spurns a call. The call is to do something about it. While grounding myself in the pleasure and privilege of the rain and water that I have access to in my life, I can reach out with the resources I have to help others who do not have the pleasure and privilege of access to rain and clean water and the food that comes from those things. This is a way of recognizing and honoring our interconnectedness as living beings on planet Earth. I do not hear the rain alone. I do not drink clean water alone. I hear and drink with the full awareness and presence of those who do not. And the pain of this awareness catalyzes action. The action is research, communicate, reach out, send aid, appeal to those in charge to change systems that oppress, appeal to everyone you talk to to help those in need in any way they can. Like Matt Damon’s great lifelong activism around bringing clean water to Africa, and the world of people like Kuki Gallman to help create irrigation agriculture resources to address famine in Africa. There are people in the United States who work to change and create laws that make access to clean water a civil right through organizations like Clean Water Action. People like Erin Brokovich work to raise awareness about contaminated drinking water and fight to change the power structures that cause the problem. Global movements and organizations are fighting climate change and working to address water shortages and food systems and food access issues.
When I hear the rain and drink clean water and eat crops from my garden that the rain watered, I hear, drink, and eat for and with awareness, and the intention to act out of care for others who do not have the privilege or pleasure to hear the rain, or drink clean water, or eat. It must be some level of unconsciousness that does not eat and drink and hear the rain and think, wow, some people do not have this privilege. I hope that more of us can wake up to the fact that there are people who are suffering from the lack that we can abundance of.
In Adrienne Marie Brown’s article, We Are Earth, she says, “To change the course of the climate crisis, we must draw on the strategies of our fellow life-forms, ensuring collective survival through interconnectedness.” I think that realizing we are all part of each other, part of the living Earth, can help us wake up from our privilege and take action to help shift the way we live on the planet so that everyone can hear the rain, drink clean water, and have free access to healthy food.
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