There’s a notion, sometimes confirmed by biochemists, that some of the water we drink has passed through someone who lived before us. I saw some formulas that at least one molecule in each 8-ounce glass of water has passed through Jesus, as well as through Oliver Cromwell.
Whether it’s one molecule or hundreds, and who that water may have or not have passed through is besides the point. The key takeaway – we are so interconnected in so many ways, that even something as elemental as water, is yet one more way that we inter-are, that we are interbeing.
Thich Nhat Hanh uses some evocative imagery in suggesting that as we enjoy our tea, that we consider the cloud in our tea. (Uh, no, not that we’re drinking cloudy tea.) It’s that in each glass of tea is water that came from rivers, lakes, streams, or wells, which before that were clouds. Before the water was in the clouds, it was where it could be blessed by the sun to evaporate into the air.
When I saw this image of kids playing with water in the sun, I was reminded of myself at about their age delighting in spraying water from a garden hose into the sun’s rays, so that I could see the wonderful rainbow. What joyful moments! Isn’t it something that such colors can come from sprayed water as readily as from rain?
Looking more deeply, I see that I’m that same water, that joy reflecting the sun’s rays in all the colors.
Such fun!

Try this: the next time you have a cup of coffee, tea, or water, think about the long trip that the water has taken to get to you. Consider how interconnected we all are by so many fine threads, with water being one of them.