Man cannot live by bread alone. Can’t get along without water either.

I’ve been contemplating the saying that bread is the staff of life. I was thinking that this was a Biblical phrase until I looked it up, and its origin, apparently, was after the KJV was written down. What is “staff?” It is something that “upholds or sustains.” So Jesus could have said that bread was the staff of life as long as he mentioned that water is even more important.

And the Bible does use water, quite literally, and also figuratively, as that part of the physical creation that does save and sustain us. I love that long prayer/recitation in the baptismal liturgy about the role of water in our faith story throughout history.

In the Bible, there are references to wells. Water was drawn up before it could be “had” and used. I don’t know that there are any references to where the water goes when it is used, i.e. waste water. I’m not caring to look this up at the moment.

I will be even more appreciative of water over the next few months. Earlier this week, we became aware (Phew….) that our septic system had a problem. After paying two men quite a bit of money to have the line steamed out, we found out that the problem is apparently way beyond the reach of their steam hose and not fixable until spring thaw. That could be a long while unless global warming takes hold here.

So in spite of our environmental awareness and desire to follow such regulations, our woods will be watered for the next few months.

THEN I realized that the incoming water pump was running every six minutes. We have some kind of a (non) pressure problem. To keep the pump from burning out, we’ve unplugged it. We need to go into the basement to plug it in when we need running water…..which is much less often than usual because we are trying to severely conserve water because of the septic system problem.

We’ve remarked often at how trouble free our utilities have been throughout the years. Well all things have a life span, I guess. And this bitter cold with flags-flying-straight-out wind, coupled with only about 3 inches of hard packed snow that hasn’t increased one wit since mid December, has driven the cold deep into the ground. We are far from the only people affected by this weather.

But the house has been warm and the cars have started. And we own warm jackets and mittens. This will be tiresome, but it could be worse. I will try to be thankful for what we do have.