Water Of Life

Having fun with the mirror that got broke back in October, and the finest H2O that our bathroom has to offer.

This whole experiment brought to mind a song we were made to sing at school so many years ago. Most of the lyrics are lost to me, but I recall the principle refrain being "water, water of life; Jesus gives us the water of life." I hadn't thought about it in years before tonight, but I remember it being the cause of great consternation in my childhood due to the tremendous historical, theological and scientific conundrums it raised in my little head. It didn't seem to bother anyone else at school, the idea that the son of God was directly responsible for the supply of one of our basic utilities, but it seriously baked my noodle; not least because it conflicted with certain things I already knew, such as the fact that our water actually came from a reservoir in Wales. (I'd established this during my inquisitive I-want-to-know-what-everything-is-and-where-it-comes-from phase a year or two earlier, and though my mum may have just said it to shut me up, it rang a lot more true than the notion of the Messiah sitting inside our kitchen sink and conjuring liquid on command). This briefly led me to the natural conclusion that Christ must be employed by Severn Trent Water Board, and that filling Welsh reservoirs was all in a day's work for Nazareth's most famous carpenter. However, I was forced to re-assess that theory in light of the considerably less-than-divine way that Severn Trent was run, bearing in mind that anyone who could create unlimited supplies of water probably wouldn't have an almighty boner for hosepipe bans the way the Water Board always did.

So, starved of answers, this philosophical wrangling went on for some time. The song just raised too many damn questions. What did people do for water before Jesus' time? Was the Earth just one big arid ball during that whole pesky "BC" era? What was all this about hydrogen and oxygen molecules? Why did the Bible not make a single mention of Jesus making any water, while banging on at great length that he went around turning the stuff to wine instead? How did saltwater come about - was that Christ's practise attempt? And so on. And so forth. Until I reached that inevitable age when I realised that grown-ups lie like bastards on a regular basis, particularly to kids, and that they're not too fussed about doing it through the medium of song.

Moral of the story: don't teach your children stupid songs, because they'll grow up to think you're a simpleton. But do play around with mirrors and water, because it looks quite pretty, and it kills time on a Sunday evening. And remember - water, water of life; the burning of hydrogen in an oxygen-rich environment or its reaction with an oxygen-containing compound, gives us the water of life.