Arial view of Ocean City. Photo.canva.com
To mark 2025 World Water Day, March 22, I want to share a personal story with you. I grew up on a barrier island called Ocean City on the northeast Atlantic coast of the United States. It has always been and continues to be a seasonal place. For thousands of years before European settlers arrived, the Native American band called Lene Lenape would migrate seasonally between Philadelphia and Ocean City, a distance of roughly 100 km. They would spend winters in Philadelphia's wooded hills, rivers and creeks. Summers were spent on the island, where the sea provided abundant catch and refreshing waters. Today, in that same migratory pattern, Ocean City is a bustling family resort town in the summer and a quiet, almost forgotten outpost in the winter. Summers are fun, and winters are harsh.
It has been more than 30 years since I last lived in Ocean City. Still, much of who I am today, my sense of vocation and how I relate to the world is connected to my early years of migrating between Philadelphia and Ocean City, following the roads of Lene Lenape. The island was paradise for me, as it must have been for them because it was a place where I felt freedom, connectedness, and curiosity.
The ocean, the coastline, the inlets on the bay, the sandpipers scuttering about and seagulls flying above, the rolling clouds, red sun and yellow moon, salty air, the marshes and grassy dunes, horseshoe crabs, butterfly clams were my steady companions and teachers. In their presence, I felt a divine embrace that was both subtle and awesome.
Pope Francis invites us to hear the cries of the Earth. By doing this, he affirms that creation can feel when it is being cared for and when it is under threat. One of our primary vocations today as Christians is to be protectors of this planet’s web of life. We do this by learning to listen to and interpret the voice and language of Creation so that when it speaks to us, we can better understand and respond.
Archbishop Peter Loy Chong addresses the 2022 United Nation’s Oceans Conference (UNOC). Photo: Amy Echeverria
For example, I return to Ocean City. I remember hearing the song of creation when I danced, played, sang, dreamed, prayed, and pondered with nature’s inhabitants of the island. I heard the cry of the ocean when enormous dredging pipes were installed on the beaches to pump sand from the ocean floor to fill the coastline so that humans would have a place to recreate. I remember thinking then and now that the practice of sand dredging, sometimes deceivingly referred to as beach nourishment or replenishment, was a violent wound inflicted on the ocean and the creatures who dwelled within her. And what about the continuous noise pollution caused by the industrial equipment running? What of the impacts on tides and water contamination?
These are questions that I carry with me and the kinds of concerns that will be addressed this June at the United Nations third Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice, France, June 9-13. Columbans attended the second UNOC in 2022, where we led a Catholic delegation from the Pacific, including Archbishop Peter Loy Chong, to Lisbon, Portugal. We intended to bring the voices and the Moana of Oceania to these negotiations, specifically calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, one of the greatest threats to the ocean today.
Delegates to the UNOC in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo: Amy Echeverria
This year, Columbans are actively engaged in preparing for this conference to include advocacy, education, and community mobilization. We are part of an international multifaith coalition, Faith in the Ocean which has issued the Faith in the Ocean Declaration. It will be presented at the UNOC in June. On this World Water Day as an expression of solidarity, we encourage you to endorse this declaration and invite others to do the same.
We often attribute creation’s cries to climate change, biodiversity loss, extraction, water wars, and so on, but I am ever more convinced that creation’s cries are the same as humans. Creation longs to be in relationship, to be respected, to be recognized and honoured, to be at peace, and to live as the Creator intended. We are waking up to God’s divine imprint in all of creation. Let’s keep waking up to the Creator’s voice as spoken in the language of creation.
Amy Echeverria is the Columban International Coordinator for Justice, Peace and Ecology.
Related links
- Read more from the current Columban eBulletin
- Pacific island states' bishops say 'No' to fossil fuel, frown on deep-sea mining
- An online conference called Our Ocean Home held in late 2022 in preparation for the Federation of Conferences of Bishops of Oceania.
