Uta's Song

What magic lies

Within your eyes

What smile

Is it the sun

To cross

A thousand

And one a mile

To hold a hand

And beg

For that magic spell

Cambridge, MA

1986

Water

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican has warned journalists who will travel with PopeBenedict to Lourdes next month not to put the revered water from the shrine in their hand luggage on the papal plane or it may be confiscated.

The pope will travel Sept 12-15 to Paris and the site in southern France where the Madonna is said to have appeared to a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, 150 years ago.

The millions of pilgrims who visit the shrine each year drink from its fonts, many believing its water to be potentially miraculous and healing. Most take bottles of it away with them.

"In order to avoid their confiscation during security controls at the airport, Air France recommends putting any bottles of Lourdes water in baggage what will go into the hold of the plane," a Vatican advisory to reporters said.

While the water from Lourdes is not strictly considered "holy" -- holy water is found in churches and must be blessed by a priest -- many websites about Lourdes describe it as "holy".

Security measures limiting liquids allowed in carry-on baggage have been in effect since 2006 when a plot to bring down planes with liquid explosives was discovered.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella)

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The interesting thing about the above article, which was published in Sept of 2008, is how similar human religions are.  Whether it is the water from Lourdes or Mecca's Zamzam or bathing in the Ganges River in India, we seem to have a fixation with "blessed water."  The idea that cleansing the soul, the warding off of evil and attaining closeness to holiness can be had via consuming water, internally or externally, must be amusing to any alien forms of life observing us from a far away galaxy.

However, when we recall that around 70% of our human bodies are composed of water, most of our earth is made up of water, and that it is the one thing we cannot live without for long (apart from oxygen which is part of H2O!), then it is easy to understand how water came to embody such important symbolism.

And that is what many rituals and metaphors in various religions stand for:  symbols of this life and how we can make it better.  Symbols that have more in common than we realize at first glance.

Best--Majd