Brookings pastor Kline: We must respect the four crucial elements of life — water, fire, earth and air — or face the consequences

I recall as a child almost drowning.

Although I hadn’t learned how to swim, the deep end of the city pool was tempting. I found that if I jumped in at a corner, jumping toward the ladder, I could haul myself out all right and have an experience of the deep.

But one jump went awry, as I kept moving farther away for my jump. I panicked! The ladder was some distance out of reach. Somehow, I managed to walk across the bottom of the pool open-eyed, climb the ladder and break the surface before I ran out of breath.

Thinking I had almost drowned, I remember looking around at everyone, including the lifeguard, to see if anyone had noticed. After that, I learned how to swim!

In fact, in time, became a swimming instructor for the YMCA and a lifeguard at their summer camp. I came to respect water (as exemplified by the swimmer above in an image taken and released by the U.S. Army) as an element that could hold you up or take you down. Water required respect!

At that same YMCA summer camp, we had a potentially serious fire. One of the campers had filled a gas can for the outboard motor from the tank near the director’s cabin. Apparently, unknown to him, it leaked a trail of gasoline into the grass all the way to the beach. Unfortunately, one of the staff smoked and a discarded cigarette ignited the trail.

Only quick action by several observers kept the fire from reaching the tank, which if ignited, would have destroyed the nearby cabin and perhaps taken some lives as well. That was an early experience that made me much more respectful of fire. It made me ashamed of those earlier times with friends, when we would throw matches into leaf piles people had left near the curb, and then would run off for some distance, waiting to see if they would burn.

The first time I ever flew in an airplane, I was on my way to Pittsburgh for a summer job interview. Never having flown, I was a little bit nervous about the flight. But not nearly as nervous as I became with the rituals of the person sitting next to me. It was a priest, who through the course of the whole flight, kept up a pattern of using his rosary beads, opening his Bible to read passages, saying prayers, and then starting the rosary again.

I thought maybe he knew something I didn’t. The geography around Pittsburgh can make landing a little rough. As we began our approach, we jumped and fell, and given my seatmate’s ritual, I expected us to crash. We didn’t!

I weathered my first flight, got the job and came to appreciate terra firma in a new and important way.

The first time I was invited to participate in a sweat lodge ceremony in Lakota lands, I found it difficult to breathe. The air in the lodge became so hot from the glowing rocks and so humid from the water poured on them by the leader that beginners like me can have trouble catching their breath.

In time, I learned to lower my head closer to the ground where the air was cooler and more refreshing. With practice, I adapted, but don’t believe I would ever reach a level of comfort to sing in a sweat lodge like the Lakota. I became more respectful of the air we breathe.

And that Lakota ceremony, perhaps more than any other experience, has made me conscious of the sacredness of the four elements: water, fire, earth and air. All are part of the sacred circle of life given us by the Creator and are deserving of our respect. We don’t always stop to think how we are all made from those four elements. We are 60% water and humans can die of thirst.

Electrical impulses stimulate our muscles and fire our neurons. Our bodies are built from the same building blocks as the earth and the soil fuels us through fruits and vegetables. Air is essential for human life.

These four elements of human life and well being have been recognized as spiritual entities as well as physical realities throughout the ages. Native Americans have helped ritualize those connections in ceremony.

Also, water in the Christian tradition baptizes one into new life in Christ. Just as fire can be environmentally helpful in nature as a source of transformation and renewal, spiritually we often need to burn away the old in the fires of suffering, tragedy or renewal for there to be new life.

Planting our feet on the earth helps to ground and center us. In the Biblical understanding, we are made from the dust of the earth. Breath, the gift of life in the Genesis story, is often an entry into spiritual life in meditation and prayer.We need to respect and honor these basic elements of life. Without our respect, with misuse and exploitation (as we are doing), they come back to bite us (as they are doing)!

Carl Kline of Brookings is a United Church of Christ clergyman and adjunct faculty member at the Mt. Marty College campus in Watertown. He is a founder and on the planning committee of the Brookings Interfaith Council, co-founder of Nonviolent Alternatives, a small not-for-profit that, for 15 years, provided intercultural experiences with Lakota/Dakota people in the Northern Plains and brought conflict resolution and peer mediation programs to schools around the region. He was one of the early participants in the development of Peace Brigades International. Kline can be reached at carl@satyagrahainstitute.org. This column originally appeared in the Brookings Register.