FOREWORD

I have a great fondness for water bears. Less than a millimeter long, water bears—or tardigrades—clamber about on eight stubby legs, tipped with the tiniest of claws, like minute animated jelly-teddies in a watery micro-world. Endearing! But water bears are much more special than that. When dry conditions arrive, instead of succumbing to death, water bears survive by just drying up . . . completely! Well, almost. Drying to a body content of 1 percent water, from close to 100 percent, the creature transforms into a microscopic speck of organic dust, utterly resistant to drought, extreme cold, vacuum, and even radioactivity. In this dormant, desiccated state, a water bear can survive for thousands of years. It’s a good trick if you can do it!

Yet, however remarkable the resilience born of desiccation seems, surely the greater miracle is the life that water brings! For, with even a single drop of water, the sleeping water bear bounces back into action, striding again through mossy jungles. How is it that one extra ingredient has the power to awaken a mote of dust? What has happened? What is water doing? What is water that its presence facilitates and empowers life?

The Spiritual Life of Water sets out in answer to these questions, probing much further than merely repeating that favored adage that “Water is Life.” Here is a tale of wholeness and connectivity told through water; of the interplay between material and nonmaterial, enacted on Earth, yet influenced from far beyond the bounds of our planet.

The extraordinary subtlety and complexity of water’s roles are vividly illustrated. And having done so, the book then asks: What are the qualities of water that best support life? The quest for a comprehensive answer to this question has been the research focus of the “heroes” of Alick Bartholomew’s story. By drawing together the findings and insights of these researchers into so many aspects of water’s reality, a picture emerges of a seemingly infinite array of interrelating properties and qualities, which we are only just starting to comprehend. And by analyzing and then synthesizing these insights within a single volume, Alick has taken us a step closer to answering that related and most fundamental of questions, “What is Life?”

CHRIS WEEDON,
COFOUNDER OF THE WATER ASSOCIATION,
SOMERSET, UK