water as symbol

"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," a coal mouse asked a wild dove.

"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.

"In that case I must tell you a marvelous story," the coal mouse said. "I sat on a branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow--not heavily, not in a giant blizzard, no, just like in a dream without any violence. Since I didn't have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch--nothing more than nothing, as you say--the branch broke off."

Have said that, the coal mouse went on its way. The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while and finally said to herself: "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come about in the world."

attributed to Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in Healing the Purpose of Your Life, p59.