Me meeting someone for the first time: Yes, I know I look like a child, but I’m actually an adult. And probably much older than you would think. Would you like to guess. I’m also very short, which is why I prefer to work with children under that age of 7. Most aren’t taller than me yet. Haha! Did I mention I was an introvert? It means I come off as kind of odd and very shy. Well, now that I’ve got that out of the way, is there a secluded table I can sit at?

All that apply for Edix!!

oh boy this is gonna be a LOT under a cut bc tbh I’m just gonna do all of them >.>

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents?

“It’s better now with my dad. We hit a rough patch during the Red War after he ran away to Titan and left me practically in charge of everyone, since they recognised me as the Commander’s son and all. It wasn’t a good time for a while between us, but we got better and now we have a better understanding of one another too. My Pa? He’s long since dead, before I was resurrected too, so I don’t have a relationship with him.”

02: Who did you last say “I love you” to?

“..... I’m not sure. I feel awkward saying it sometimes, like it’s reserved for romantic relationships only. Though I say it to dad sometimes, and to Artie too.”

03: Do you regret anything?

“A lot. Not being able to save my Fireteam in the Hellmouth being one, not being able to save Cayde being another. Lots of things.”

04: Are you insecure?

“.... Yes. Though it’s not so bad anymore, not like it used to be at least.”

05: What is your relationship status?

“Complicated. I like Asher, but sometimes I think he just sees right through me. Though I’ve taken to actually going out into the City more at night with some friends. That’s led to a loooot of kissing various Guardians.”

06: How do you want to die?

“I’d prefer not to, to be honest. Though I’d like to avoid death by Hive at least. I’m not sure, I’ve never particularly thought about a final death kind of scenario.”

07: What did you last eat?

“I don’t remember.”

“You had cookies Zavala made you, because you forget to eat.”

“Oh yeah. Dad makes great cookies.”

08: Played any sports?

“Does running around Io for Asher, collecting samples and fighting Vex count?”

09: Do you bite your nails?

“Only when I’m nervous, but even then I’m more likely to just fiddle with loose threads or bounce my leg.”

10: When was your last physical fight?

“Two days ago when I needed to gather samples of Radiolaria and Phaseglass for Asher. I’m still finding bruises from that.”

11: Do you like someone?

“Asher. But he doesn’t see me, not really. At least, not outside of being his assistant, I don’t think.”

12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours?

“Yes, and I don’t remember any of it. I try not to do it too much, Spiro is forever telling me off and so is Dad.”

13: Do you hate anyone at the moment?

“Since I don’t count, no I suppose not.”

14: Do you miss someone?

“Yes. I worry for Artemis when she’s out on Hive murder-sprees and I... often miss her greatly. Cayde too.”

15: Have any pets?

“Too many! I have three cockatiels, two cats and an Ahamkara!”

16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment?

“Weary and very tired.”

“Well that all-nighter you pulled in your greenhouse didn’t exactly help.”

17: Ever made out in the bathroom?

“Probably? I know that I made out with a Titan on my first night out when I was very much wasted, but whether it was in a bathroom or not I couldn’t tell you.”

18: Are you scared of spiders?

“.......”

“He stands there like he’s rooted and cries if it’s a big one. He’s that scared of them.”

19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?

“Yes. I know it’s never a good idea, but... I know I could save Cayde, if I could go back in time. I know I could get to him on time.”

20: Where was the last place you snogged someone?

“In the corner of some club in the City, I think.”

21: What are your plans for this weekend?

“Studying my plants and tending to my garden.”

22: Do you want to have kids? How many?

“God no, never. It’s hard enough just taking care of Kilgharrah and myself, let alone anyone else.”

23: Do you have piercings? How many?

“I’m tempted to get some, at least some in my ear.”

24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)?

“I don’t really know. I’m good at botany and horticulture, and I’m learning more about the Light in-depth but other than that I don’t know.”

25: Do you miss anyone from your past?

“My Pa. I didn’t know him, I was killed as a toddler and at the same time as him, so I don’t have any memories. Dad showed me pictures of him, though, and he looks nice. I wish I did know him better.”

26: What are you craving right now?

“Peace and quiet. A partner. I dunno.”

27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart?

“I don’t know. I’m more likely to break my own half the time with how attached to things or people I get.”

28: Have you ever been cheated on?

“Hah, no.”

29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry?

“At time of answering, I don’t have one, so no.”

30: What’s irritating you right now?

“Being so god damn cold. I have a sweater on and the heating on and my own Solar Light and I’m STILL COLD!”

31: Does somebody love you?

“My dad does. I don’t like speaking for anyone else I know, though.”

32: What is your favourite color?

“Largely any of the Io shaders. Blue’s good too, and green.”

33: Do you have trust issues?

“Depends who’s asking me to trust them. I trust my dad, Artemis and Dad with my life. Plus Othion and his husband Izel. Oh, and Vigil, since he guards the Speaker. Ikora, too. But the likes of the Drifter? It’s getting harder to say.”

“Long story short, sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t.”

34: Who/what was your last dream about?

“I dreamt of a throne world that belonged to Crota, and it was filled with warped versions of the plants in my garden. Everything was a sickly Hive green and there was a broken throne with vines snaking all around it. I was sat in it, and there were hordes of Hive knelt around me like I was royalty.... I think it’s just a scrambled memory, after getting that shard of Crota’s soul crystal in my eye.”

“Yeah, that’s all it was. Don’t think on it too much, Edix.”

35: Who was the last person you cried in front of?

“My Ghost. It feels weird to be crying around anyone else sometimes.”

36: Do you give out second chances too easily?

“Yes. Sometimes I’m too kind for my own good.”

37: Is it easier to forgive or forget?

“I think it’s easier to forgive. That way you can move past it and carry on, rather than forgetting about it and then it coming back to haunt you at inopportune times.”

38: Is this year the best year of your life?

“I doubt it. Cayde died, Dad and Ikora have been arguing, the Drifter moved into the Tower Annex, the Black Armory opened its shady doors, the Spider is very interested in even more shady things, the Nine have rocked up with their Emissary and even with Mara gone, she’s up to no good as usual and I don’t like it.”

39: How old were you when you had your first kiss?

“In mortal terms, around 24 or 25? As a Guardian, no idea. I don’t count the years so much.”

40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked?

“Oh my god no. I’d rather die than do that.”

51: Favourite food?

“Not sure I have one, to be honest with you.”

52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason?

“Sometimes. Not everything can be attributed to that logic, given the nature of this bastard existence some things are just at random and have no or little reason to them.”

53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night?

“Worked on some more jellyfish to give to families in the City. They lost more than we did during the Red War, so I try to give something nice back to them when I can.”

54: Is cheating ever okay?

“No. If you can’t do it on your own merit, then you don’t deserve to reap the rewards through cheating.”

55: Are you mean?

“I can be, but I don’t like to.”

56: How many people have you fist fought?

“Not that many. I’m not all that strong, physically.”

57: Do you believe in true love?

“I’d like to, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem possible.”

58: Favourite weather?

“When it’s raining on an autumn day, because at least I’m not too cold. But also I can just sit by the window, wrapped up in blankets and listen to the rain while I crochet or read.”

59: Do you like the snow?

“Yes! It’s so much fun to roll around in it and throw snowballs at other Guardians!”

60: Do you wanna get married?

“I don’t think so. It’s bold to assume a relationship would last that long.”

61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby?

“Depends who’s calling me that and the circumstance of the name. If they’re taking the piss, and I don’t know them, then I’m not happy about it.”

62: What makes you happy?

“Little things. Looking after my plants, helping Asher, my crochet projects, being able to spend time with my friends.”

63: Would you change your name?

“No. I like it how it is.”

64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed?

“Probably, since I don’t know who they were, their name or what they looked like. I was... very drunk.”

65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?

“Well that’s literally never gonna happen, so I’m not even engaging in this hypothetical.”

66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around?

“Yes. Artemis is very dear to me and we have an understanding of one another. Even with our differences, I still feel comfortable around her.”

67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to?

“Artemis, duh. Well, maybe Ikora.”

68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

“Probably Artie again. We talk about the Hive a lot, given our dispositions.”

69: Do you believe in soulmates?

“I’d like to, just not in my own case.”

70: Is there anyone you would die for?

“My dad, Artemis. I’d die for Asher and, in fact, have. Many times. Curse you, Pyramidion.”

OC interview meme

Tagged by: @dirthara-mama thank you <3

And of course for my bb

After Trespasser

1. What is your name?

Evelyn Lavellan.

2. What is your real name?

It’s cause it’s a shem name isn’t it? Don’t worry, it’s Evelyn Lavellan still.

3. Do you know why you were called that?

Mother was a city elf and a human named Evelyn helped her escape and my ma was inspired so here I am.

4. Are you single or taken?

Very much taken. See this necklace? Half of a dragon’s tooth, The Iron Bull has the other half.

5. Have any abilities or powers?

I mean...I have the genetics to harness magic and I’m good at that so... Well, I’m a Dreamer as well, and can-used to close demon rifts. Also studied rift magic and that’s why the missing part of my arm looks like a translucent green hand.

6. Stop being a Mary Sue.

Pal, I have a shit load of issues I have to deal with on the daily. Mental shit, physical shit, social shit. Do not even start with me.

7. What’s your eye color?

Pale forest green. Mother had green eyes, Father had heterochromia with one brown and one green.

8. How about your hair color?

Red with brown undertones. Sometimes it looks red red other times it looks brown, depends on the lighting.

9. Have you any family members?

Only child, Mother and Father got divorced cause my mom was emotionally abusive to me. She changed, though I’m still weary around her and happy she doesn’t push anything. I have chosen family from the Inquisition and my old Keeper. My father and I are really the only remaining Lavellans. We are a direct bloodline from Lavellan themself as well. Other than that, not much, but we’re close.

10. Oh? What about pets?

When I was little I had a pet rabbit and was best friends with a Halla. Now I have a pet dragon-well, she’s imprinted on me, I’m her mom. And I have a dracolisk that chose me as well.

11. That’s cool I guess, now tell me something you don’t like.

The way you phrased that statement at the beginning is a good start. I have a long list, you have to be more specific. People who are ignorant and arrogant piss me off, so there.

12. Do you have any hobbies/actives you like doing?

Well they wouldn’t be a hobby if I hated it now would it? Yes, reading, writing, hanging off of things, instrument playing, singing, art as well.

13. Ever hurt anyone before?

Oh plenty. And I hate myself everyday for it. Each time I’m forced to kill someone I know that that person had a family and friends, maybe completely innocent to the situation. And they’re going to receive a letter that says their loved one died, and it’s hard. I feel like I’ve let people down multiple times due to being ignorant and naive. Yeah sure, saved the world the weight should be off my shoulders right? Nope. It lingers like fade pain. Haunted by so much. The fact that Thedas could still be destroyed because the Veil falls, doesn’t help matters much because now I feel like I did everything for nothing so...

14. Ever...killed anyone before?

Many. I always try to do it in self defense and only if the killing is necessary.

15. What kind of animal are you?

Watch it. And if you don’t know any better don’t ever ask that question to anyone, especially elves. Though, I feel like my familiar would be a fox or cat or OH, gargoyle cat if they only existed past sculptures.

16. Name your worst habits.

I’m oblivious. I cry a shit load, so I always seem over sensitive or over emotional when most of the time I’m not. Guess who’s never taken seriously? Um, I put others needs before my own, which might not sound too bad until you realize I cannot truly help another person until I know I’m fully able to by prioritizing myself first.

17. Do you look up to anyone at all?

My father. And a few of my friends.

18. Gay, straight, or bisexual?

Pansexual.

19. Do you go to school?

Taught by my clan, first hand by the Keeper. Yes and no.

20. Do you ever want to marry and have kids one day?

Marriage is important to help put who I am in stone. Like, another document that says I was an elf mage. And of course for legal reasons if Bull and I wanna do things economically speaking. But, I am infertile and have zero motherly type instincts. And no, caring for safety of others doesn’t guarantee that I have said instincts, just means I care.

21. Do you have any fanboys/fangirls?

Probably.

22. What are you most afraid of?

Abuse. And any of it’s synonyms and connotations. Being like my mother was.

23. What do you usually wear?

Clothes. Um, easy things to put on or take off. I stray from pants when I can. Hate those bastards.

24. Do you love someone?

I killed dragons in his name, yes I love someone. And platonically or family wise I also love others.

25. When was the last time you wet yourself?

Diaper years.

26. Well, it’s not over yet!

Lovely.

27. What class are you? (High class, middle class, low class)

High class now. I hate it. I try to give away all the money I can to charities and people who need it but for some reason I keep getting fucking paid and I want them to stop because I’m fine, it’s everyone else that needs the money.

28. How many friends do you have?

Around 15ish. But like, my closest best friend group is around three. Yes, I count Bull amongst them.

29. What are your thoughts on pie?

Fucking love it. Blueberry pie is my favorite and I can make it and ugh, i need one now.

30. Favorite drink?

Alcoholic wise, I prefer rum, but I actually don’t drink much and don’t really enjoy it all that much but I can tolerate a few rounds for fun. Bull is respectful of that. Otherwise, it’s a tie between apple juice and hot chocolate.

31. What’s your favorite place?

I have pillows in the corner of my room I snuggle in a lot and it’s my safe space kinda. But, I really enjoy Crestwood, I think the scenery can be beautiful.

32. Are you interested in someone?

...yes. The Iron Fucking Bull.

33. What’s your bra cup size and/or how big is your willy?

Um...small? Bull describes it as the size of medium oranges. Don’t ask how we got into that discussion because it was really a random topic that just came up.

34. Would you rather swim in the lake or the ocean?

Well, I really like how calm lakes can be. But I do feel a sort of calling towards the ocean. I think that’s because every few years or so, my clan would go to a coastal/island clan and exchange stuff and have fun. My father actually is half coastal and half Lavellan blood, so I have a bit in that in me. Though I’m like 200% sure because he has vitiligo and my ma had really sun sensitive skin, I can’t tan or be out in the sun very long even with protection.

35. Whats your type?

Intelligent, that does not equate to book smart by the way. Open mindedness, humorous, playful but can be serious in serious situations, kind, someone who can match my morals. Good chemistry.

36. Any fetishes?

Not by the true definition of one, no, but I have a shit load of kinks. That’s for another discussion if you wish. I’m not ashamed.

37. Seem or uke? Top or bottom? Dominant or submissive?

I’m a submissive brat about 90% of the time, sometimes I have a craving to be dominant, though, but I know Bull is extremely uncomfortable in truly submissive positions so we try and work things out, compromise.

38. Camping or indoors?

Both.

39. Are you waiting for the interview to end?

Yes.

40. Now it’s over!

Thank you.

Tagging: I’ve seen a lot of people do this recently so idk! If you see this and want to do it consider yourself tagged!

The Waiting Season--What I Have Learned & Am Still Learning

WAITING IS DEFINED AS THE ACTION OF STAYING WHERE ONE IS OR DELAYING ACTION UNTIL A PARTICULAR TIME OR SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS.

WOW!!! Well first off, let me say..it’s been a long,long time since I have written a blog post. Years probably. =( & while I hate to say that, one thing I always try to do is make sure ALL my post are inspired by God.I’ve told people this before..I love writing, its my passion, its my voice when I don’t know what to say, It’s one of the most BEAUTIFUL gifts besides my family & my best friend that God has given me. =) <3 Speaking of my family & my best friend BOTH have been asking me about blogging and writing lately. BOTH have always pushed me to get back into it, so here I am.=) LOL. I’m soo thankful for my amazing family & my amazing best friend for always pushing me to “keep at it..don’t stop writing..you have to stay consistent”. For my mom saying “Girl, write that book, you need to start blogging again”. For my best friend Justyn who always lovingly ask “You been blogging? How’s your blog? Have you been writing lately?”. Then of course there is my daddy who ALWAYS tells me...”You have an idea baby..just do it”.

I said ALLL that to say, whenever I post I like to be SURE all post are inspired by GOD. Also, how thankful I am for ALL the support I’ve gotten over the years even when I didn’t know what to write, I’m still soo blessed to have people who KNOW how much writing/blogging is to me and how much of a RELEASE it is, they understand it’s one of my giffs and they KNOW how God allows me to use it. MOST OF ALL-- I’m soo thankful to Jesus for giving me this BEAUTIFUL gift...He ALLOWS me to hear his voice soo CLEAR, soo often (yes, even when I don’t blog,lol) & He ALWAYS is there with sweet reminders for me.

SOO MUCH has been going on since I last blogged. Too much for me to even write in this blog post.

“THE WAITING SEASON”....

Honestly, I feel like it’s something we ALLL can relate to in one way or another. Whether that be a job, promotion, to be in a relationship, to get engaged, married, start a new beginning or whatever. We are ALL waiting for something. I know for me, the ACTUAL waiting is the hardest hard, but one thing i have learned (or am trying to learn) is how to stay BUSY even while waiting. There are things that God wants us to do WHILE we continously wait on HIM and we have to be SURE to do our part. Prayer, Studying his word, Going to church, being intentional about time with Him and Him alone.

A lot of times I feel it’s like during the waiting is when God is able to do His best work not only IN us but THROUGH us as well. Waiting increases our faith, teaches us many life lessons and also helps us see situations in a different perspective. I’ve learned not only does God KNOW BEST (of course =)  but, we are in this EARTHLY world and in the SPIRITUAL realm, when we “tap” into that God’s reasoning is soo much GREATER, MORE BEAUTIFUL & SO MUCH MORE POWERFUL than we can realize.

Waiting is hard, difficult, frustrating & we may want to give up at times but just KNOW that when we want to give up MOST...THAT’S WHEN GOD COMES AND BLESSES US THE MOST!!!!...&& What A blessing that is. =)

***BIBLE VERSES ON WAITING =)***

Psalm 40:1-17

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie! You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. ...

Isaiah 64:4

From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.

Habakkuk 2:1-3

I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

Isaiah 40:31

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Psalm 27:13-14

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Lamentations 3:25

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

Isaiah 30:18

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.

James 5:7-8

Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Romans 5:3-4  

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

Psalm 27:14

Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Psalm 33:20-22

Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

Psalm 130:5-6

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

James 5:11

Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

Psalm 37:34

Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off.

Micah 7:7

But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.

Psalm 62:5

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.

Matthew 6:34

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Psalm 25:4-5

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.

Psalm 27:1-14

Of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock. ...

Romans 8:18

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Psalm 40:1

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.

Psalm 62:1

To the choirmaster: according to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David. For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.

John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Acts 1:4

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me;

Proverbs 20:22

Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.

Habakkuk 2:3

For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

Job 1:1-22

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually. ...

1 Peter 1:22-25

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

In the 1,000-plus days since Flint, Michigan, had (federally acceptable) potable water, a lot more than the pipes has eroded.

Trust, like dependably clean water, is not easy to come by in this slightly careworn city of just under 100,000 people. For residents, the knowledge that a toxic cocktail of contaminants had been inadvertently released into their water supply is bad enough. But the water crisis is also understood as part of a grander historical narrative of neglect and political dismissal.

For a city that has given the US — and by extension, the world — so much (the modern automobile industry as we know it was Flint-bred), Flint has been treated shabbily indeed. And beneath the patina of low-level anger at the great injustice it has been — and are still — experiencing lies another layer, familiar to other victims of municipal wrongdoing the world over: weary resignation. As I talked to residents of Flint, or “Flintstones” as some call themselves, over several days in February (during which time the state released its Civil Rights Commission report, which highlighted systemic and historical racism as one of the root causes of the crisis), there was a palpable skepticism that things would get better anytime soon. That’s because what we know to be unacceptable has long been acceptable in Flint. If you were to set a timer on how long it takes for “outraged” to become “stoical,” it’s somewhere in the region of two and a half years.

The story of how Flint’s water supply came to be dangerous for consumption is largely familiar at this point, but here’s an encapsulation: On 25 April 2014, the city of Flint switched to the Flint River as its new water source. (It had previously drawn from Lake Huron.) Residents began complaining about skin rashes and the smell and colour of the water soon after. In response, the city issued “boil water” advisories in August and September 2014, and increased flushing of the water mains. By October, General Motors had switched its supply source to Flint Township over fears that the chloride in the treated water from the Flint River was causing corrosion in its machines. In early February 2015, Flint resident LeeAnne Walters complained about rashes on her son’s body, and by the end of the month had reached out to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In August 2015, a researcher from Virginia Tech named Marc Edwards began testing Flint’s water quality; in September, he alerted the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that the water’s corrosiveness was causing the pipes to leach lead. (The DEQ disputed the results of Edwards’ study.) Later that month, Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha, a researcher at the city’s Hurley Medical Center, found high levels of lead in Flint’s children, prompting officials to issue a lead advisory — and to reiterate that the city’s water complied with federal safety laws.

On 1 October 2015, 524 days after the switch to the Flint River, the Genesee County Health Department declared a public health emergency and urged Flint residents to refrain from drinking the water.

By the time I left Flint on 22 February this year, the water was still not safe enough to drink directly out of the faucet, according to the politicians and charity workers I spoke to, and the residents’ feelings on the matter had remained at a simmer about it, quelled only slightly by whole-house filters and bottled water (either privately purchased or received gratis from the city). The flip-flopping of city and state officials over the water crisis confirmed for residents something they had quietly considered the truth — that their lives mean little to those in power — hardening what had previously been only a lingering, general suspicion into something more concrete.

In March this year, Mustafa Ali, the assistant associate administrator of the Office of Environmental Justice, resigned from the EPA after almost 25 years. His work had been centred on mitigating the impact of pollution in lower-income communities — communities like Flint, in fact — and even then, his agency had been roundly criticized for not doing enough. Flint was one of most high-profile examples of environmental injustice (the Dakota Access pipeline is another) under an administration that at least appeared to be interested in ameliorating the plight of at-risk communities. Now in the era of President Trump — with his seeming disdain for the work of the EPA, and a wish-list budget that featured swingeing cuts to the agency — questions arise about what environmental justice will look like in the years to come. But in the meantime — as no one has been formally convicted of any crime as of writing — a lingering question remains for the residents of Flint: Will they be able to trust their elected officials — local, municipal, and gubernatorial — ever again?

If the answer is yes, what, precisely, would it take?

Danielle and Christopher Kabel are still getting used to life with their little one, a friendly and very noisy 9-month-old named Adara. The couple, who met in high school, had been living with Danielle’s parents in Flushing, a city just west of Flint, but recently moved back to an apartment in the city. “I turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink, and sure enough, it came out brown,” Danielle, 24, says with a smirk. “I had forgotten that we had to worry about the water in Flint until I turned on that faucet.”

We are sitting in the basement space of Veterans of Now, a nonprofit enterprise on Court Street that provides veterans with information and access to their entitlements. The proprietor of VON is George F. Grundy II, a soft-spoken former Marine whose description of returning home from Afghanistan boils down to a few firmly uttered words: “I didn’t have plans on getting out, but you know, life happened, and it was time to leave.” He started VON because he’d been in need himself. “When I got out of the military, I found myself without shelter; I was homeless,” he says as he helps himself to some of the communal loaded nachos in the centre of the table. “So once I got into a position from where I could help, I created the organization to do such.” By the time he moved in, the water response in the city was underway. “I moved into my homeFebruary 29, 2016, and from that day to this, I've had water on the location for people, for the community to have access to.” He calls his place “a warehouse” and works with local organizations to offer work to young unemployed people, which during the crisis has meant water delivery. “It's just trying to make a horrible situation tolerable. I just do what I can, day to day. Just...do deliveries, and create opportunities for people to be able to work, to be encouraged.”

Around the table are other young Flintstones: Jordan Paul, 21, and Tony Atlis, 31, who sit near the Kabels and dig into the nachos as well. Before we start talking about Flint, we all discuss the merits of a catastrophe-imposed reset button, inspired by Kathryn Schulz’s 2015 New Yorker article about a super-earthquake in the not-too-distant future. Atlis (who clearly enjoys playing to an audience) believes it’s the only way humans will learn; Paul, younger and more optimistic, is less convinced.

On the topic of Flint’s water, though, both men are similarly appalled, and thinking of the ways poisoned water might affect them — and the youngest members of their families. Atlis has a 3-year-old daughter; Paul’s nephew is 2. The two men have spent most of the crisis worried about them. “When my daughter's home,” says Atlis, who delivers water throughout the city, “I can't give her a bath in the water because it can affect her little immune system.” That’s because, he says, his own skin was affected by the tainted water: “I noticed that I had a body rash from my neck down — just real fine bumps — all over my body. Then it turned from that to a, like, a big, almost like a scab. Like scales on my body — it was itching and hurt. I was like, maybe I got eczema or something, but then they began talking about the water crisis.”

Atlis has strong words for the people who let this crisis happen. “I think they should be punishable by death.” When the others around the table recoil sharply, he shrugs.

Chris Kabel pipes up: “Waterboard them with the water from our river?”

“I'm just being honest with you,” Atlis continues, “because actually if you think about it, that’s…”

Danielle Kabel interrupts to finish his sentence: “...kinda what they're doing.”

“Right,” Atlis says.

The Kabels have an informal deadline set on when it might be time to leave Flint. “It's only a matter of time before, if they don't fix the problem, I'm getting the heck out of here,” says Chris. “’Cause I'm not gonna have to deal with her [he gestures at his daughter] growing up 18 years — it's already been three — dealing with this.” He fears his home city may be the first domino, and describes it as the “ground zero” of high lead in the water supply. “They're finding out all over the country that it's not just Flint — it's multiple cities that are dealing with problems like this, that are having high lead levels. We sit here and have to be told, ‘Okay, your water's at a safe drinking level of lead now’” — he raises his voice incredulously now — “there shouldn't be no ‘safe levels’ of lead in your water!’” The others laugh and murmur in agreement.

But his wife has other concerns, too. They’d like to add to their family in the future — she’d love a little boy next — and as she sees it, the water is only one of a list of the city’s problems. “Education is a bad enough issue as it is,” she says. “They're steady closing schools and stuff like that. But the water on top of that? Like, we can't keep going, living off bottled water. It takes a lot of water to run a bath for a child. And as she gets older, that's going to be morewater.”

She laughs as she bounces Adara on her knee. “Can't keep doing that. If the only option is to leave, that's the only option.”

Flint is a city whose fortunes were built on capitalist industry: Lumber gave way to GM (and the automobile industry), and then...not much. It earned a reputation as a hotbed of violent crime following its economic downturn. For most people, Flint was best known for its starring role in Michael Moore’s 1989 documentary Roger & Me, which followed GM’s decision to close several plants there. Walking around the city in 2017, however, is a little sadder: The quiet slide from being the beating heart of an entire industry to a place where the water is unsafe for human consumption feels apparent in every square foot. What’s been going on in Flint for years reminds George Grundy of a structured military action. “To conquer an area,” he says quietly, “mess with their economics, you deal with their food, and you tamper with their water. Those things right there, they kill the community; it kills any type of opportunity for them to fight back or to sustain themselves. So with all the compounded issues that Flint is dealing with…” He trails off. “We're number one in a lot of bad things, like crime: We're in the top five when it comes to crime. When it comes to the poorest communities, we're in the top 10. When it comes to anything negative that you wanna say about American society, we win. We're competitors for the gold.”

Around the table, his fellow Flintstones nod soberly. Since the 2002–2003 academic year, more than 20 schools have closed, almost half of them in predominantly black neighbourhoods. The population of the city has been steadily declining since the 1920s, according to census data. (Its peak was in 1960 at almost 200,000; it's just under half of that today.) For years, breathless crime reports told of Flint's reputation for being especially violent; in both 2010 and 2012 FBI figures showed it had the highest murder rate among cities with a population of 100,000 or more. (It fell out of the top 10 most violent cities in the US last year; local police figures released last May suggested homicides were down 32% year-on-year.) Flint verges on being an urban food desert, with lower-earning residents having less access to healthy food options, although since moving to the more accessible location of the old Flint Journal premises, the city’s vibrant farmers market has seen an uptick in the number of poorer residents who come to shop. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the city’s unemployment rate at 5.4% in March this year (nationally, the rate was 4.5%), and the median household income in the city is $24,862 (compared with a state median of $51,084 and a national median of $55,775).

Flint has its problems. It certainly did not need a water crisis.

If you’re in Flint these days, it is impossible not to think of water — and everything that water touches. There is no relief from the thought of it: Pulling off the highway and heading to a hotel downtown, you can spot the signs for water distribution centres. At the hotel check-in, the traditional ornamental basket of health-giving fruit on reception desks the world over is absent; instead, there sits a basket of bottled water. The receptionist smiles as she mentions the four complimentary bottles of water in my room fridge, before telling me I can come and get more anytime, and helpfully points out a machine pumping out seven-times-filtered chilled water just opposite the lifts. Thinking about water this closely is an enforced hobby here, and before long I am caught in its thrall. Upstairs, I brush my teeth with bottled water — reminding me of my years at boarding school in Nigeria during the ’90s — and when I shower I get just wet enough to lather, and again to quickly rinse off, mouth grimly sealed the whole time. I eat peelable-only fruit and decline polite offers of water at every meeting I attend. When a small, blister-like irritation springs up on my right leg a few days later, my first thought is of the water. I snap a photo of it — just in case, I think. My already-splintered trust breaks even further in my few days in town; imagine this cycle, multiplied endlessly over these many months, for the population of an entire city.

Water as a preoccupation is not new in Michigan. On some level, everyone understands water’s place in Michigan’s ecosystem (economic and otherwise). This is the Great Lakes State, among other things, as well as one of those regions of the country where industry is woven into the cultural fabric — along with the attendant industrial waste. So water, clean or dirty, is a constant and enduring Michigan concern; anxiety about its cleanliness and potability is old hat. (A friend from the Great Lakes Bay region not-so-fondly remembers childhood fears about Dow Chemical, and dioxin levels.)

The intense focus on their city over these last couple of years has given Flint residents a distinct air of media training when you talk to them: Their responses have been dulled by endless months of repetition to a sort of flat patter. They’ve read the articles, they’ve watched the news, and they are tired. Even so, there is still an eagerness to talk about it, to make sure they haven’t been forgotten, to hold someone — anyone — to account for what they see as unequivocally unjust.

On 17 February, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission (MCRC) published a 131-page report, The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint. In a summary, the authors of the commission write, “We believe the underlying issue is historical and systemic, dates back nearly a century, and has at its foundation race and segregation of the Flint community.” However, they are quick to remove the suggestion this racism came from racists in Flint today. (“We are not suggesting that those making decisions related to this crisis were racists, or meant to treat Flint any differently because it is a community primarily made up by people of color.”) The “top” notes are as follows: Implicit bias and racism played a part, baked in as they are to Flint’s history of segregation along housing and education; so did the emergency manager law, which essentially overrode locally elected officials and likely exacerbated the crisis.

Reiterating a conclusion reached by the governor-commissioned Flint Water Advisory Task Force in March 2016, the commission said the crisis was an act of environmental injustice, adding, “had the emergency manager law focused on the financial health of the city and the welfare of its residents, and not just on cost-cutting measures, and/or had it allowed for meaningful involvement of the community when it came to the very basic needs of life, clean water and clean air, this too could have served to mitigate or even prevent the water crisis.”

An extract from the state’s own press release, published on its website after the report came out, boiled Flint’s issues down thusly: “historical, structural and systemic racism combined with implicit bias led to decisions, actions, and consequences in Flint [that] would not have been allowed to happen in primarily white communities such as Birmingham, Ann Arbor, or East Grand Rapids.”

Having been in office since August 2009, Dayne Walling was the mayor of the city when the switchover to the Flint River was made. He lost his re-election bid in November 2015 to Karen Weaver, the city’s first female mayor. As with all things politics in 2017, it’s difficult to say if he would’ve held on to his seat in a city without an acute and ongoing water crisis. But it’s true that in July 2015, then-mayor Walling did his weekly appearance on local TV channel WNEMand, while on air, drank water drawn from the faucet in an attempt to prove it was safe for residents to drink. “It's your standard tap water,” he said on camera, before adding, “You can taste a little bit of the chlorine.”

These days he is regretful of that moment. “There's not a day that goes by that I don’t think about pushing the button to go to the Flint River, or drinking the water on Channel 5,” he says when we speak. “I regret that that happened every single day. It was honest of me to drink the water, because my family — my kids, my parents — we were drinking the water. I trusted that the water met the standards. And I believed that the problems we were seeing were in individual households, as a result of the ageing infrastructure, and I was working every day to try to address the problems as I understood them.” He clasps and unclasps his hands as he pauses. “And then to find out, a few months later, that there’s this underlying problem, that the corrosion control wasn't only not being done, but had this terrible effect leaching lead into the system? You know, thousands of kids, thousands of seniors being affected citywide. So I regret those actions. Every day I carry that with me.”

We’re speaking at Walling’s home, where he lives with his wife and children. He seems sincere, which inherently makes trusting him difficult — the aphorism about faking sincerity comes to mind but doesn’t stick. He still lives in the city, and even now, without his mayoral title, appears to care deeply: He has a thoughtful face, and it’s not hard to imagine him spending long hours thinking about both that ill-fated TV appearance — and the crisis as it keeps unfolding — all this time later. On the issue of trust, Walling often returns to one word: transparency. In order for the people of Flint to believe they are sincerely cared for by the powers that be, they have to see it. “It takes time,” he says. “We learned that information was mismanaged, that information was deliberately manipulated and filtered before it got to us here in this community, and it was clear to me that it would take a long time for that trust to be rebuilt. People have to see information and actions and priorities all aligning, not for one week...but for years and years.” Why, for example, he asks, isn’t there a centralized, consistently updated service that details exactly what is being fixed in the city’s water system?

“I'd like to be able to go on a map online and be able to see the services that have been provided to every household and every family here in the city, and be able to see what has been done, what hasn't been done, what's planned to get done,” he says. “People need to be able to go and see for themselves what's happening on that block of Brownell, what's happening on that block of Fenton Road.” It would be a massive undertaking, involving all levels from city to federal government, as well as volunteer organizations, but Walling thinks it would be worth it. “If we keep talking in generalities, then people aren't going to be able to trust those kinds of broad statements.”

The day before, I’d met state Sen. Jim Ananich at his home, interrupting time with his young son, Jacob, whom he only semi-successfully distracted with Sesame Street for the duration of our conversation. “I don't know what it would take,” he'd replied when I asked how trust can be restored to the people of Flint. But like the former mayor, he believes it starts with the pipes, and he touts the benefits of total transparency. “They always seem as though they're trying to get ahead of a press story. And until they stop doing that, no one's gonna believe them. I told them a year ago, told people in the governor's office, I said, 'This is going to sound crazy but what you should do is start telling the truth.' And nobody argued with me.”

On a visit to the beleaguered city in April 2016, Governor Rick Snyder (now on his second term, and therefore ineligible for re-election at the 2018 gubernatorial election), promised he would drink Flint water for a month to prove how safe the water was. (No one seems to have followed up to confirm he kept this promise.)

Last month Ananich released a statement saying, “My city was poisoned on April 25, 2014 — three years ago today. To this day, we are still reeling from the devastating effects of reckless emergency management and a state government that failed to keep us safe.”

The anniversary marked the city’s 1,097th day without clean water.

At the headquarters of the United Way of Genesee County, a nonprofit in downtown Flint, I speak with Jamie Gaskin, the CEO of the organization. He is an affable, helpful sort of man, who speaks with a relaxed drawl reminiscent of Hollywood actors Owen Wilson and Jere Burns.

Gaskin and the United Way stood with Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha in 2015 when she announced the results of her research into lead in Flint’s children, responding to the emergency by buying filters, and water by the truckload, to get to the most at-risk residents: pregnant women and people with immune deficiencies. The wariness residents feel, Gaskin contends, stems from a lack of transparency from the city and state officials. “Fundamentally, there's this mistrust because of all the uncertainty around who knew what when, and who was truthful and who was not,” he says. The confusion over timelines and information is a potent driver of suspicion.

“There are many people that don't trust the government, or the experts, then they've lost all this value [in their homes]. There are people who clearly have symptoms or things that have happened to them where they can say, 'Look, this has happened,'” he says. “And then there's the unknown health problems.” The worst of it, however, is what remains truly unknowable. “The majority of people, I think, are sort of in this mystery area, where you've had an unknown exposure over this year-and-a-half period of time where the water was coming from the Flint River, and you don’t know what the health consequences are going to be, other than looking at what data says lead exposure does to you over a lifetime,” Gaskin continues. “And those things are simply not good: lower IQ for children, folks with immune deficiencies having a problem…” Earlier this year, the CDC found a genetic link between an outbreak of Legionnaires’ diseasebetween 2014 and 2015 and the city’s water.

Gaskin is a Flint resident himself, and bought a house in the city 15 years ago. He has a chlorine filter installed in his shower, and while he will also drink the filtered water, he admits he prefers bottled. “The residents are faced — I'm faced — with looking at this thing, going, ‘Who do I trust?’ I really look to the scientists and the experts to tell us the truth. But emotionally, even when they're looking at you and telling you, and you believe them, it's hard to just...drink the water,” he says. Sen. Ananich echoed Gaskin’s sentiments. “I don't trust 'em and I'm part of it, technically. Right?” he says. “I've seen too many examples of where I have proof that they lied to me, through emails that have come out. Communications I was having with them, they were saying everything was fine and they were communicating afterwards, saying, ‘My god, this is terrible,’ but they didn't tell me that, knowing that I lived in Flint, and I had a 19-month-old.” He shakes his head.

“I think we have a long-term problem,” says Gaskin. “There'll be a lot of residents, a lot of kids probably, who will ask questions every time they drink water for the rest of their lives. Those are these kind of things that are gonna drag with us for years and years.”

For the next few or several years, filters will be the only way for Flint residents to live and use the water being pumped into their homes. “Learning to trust that a filter really does what it's supposed to do is critical to us moving forward," Gaskin says. "At some point the mass distribution of water is likely to stop; we're gonna get to some point in the future where bottled water is not going to be everywhere and what's going to be left for us is filters. So it's going to be critical that residents learn to trust those filters.”

Here’s what Gaskin wants to stress: The water is still not fit for consumption without human intervention at the faucet end. “The water has returned to what the state would describe as ‘normal’ levels but because there’s going to be so much disruption to the system over the next three years with all the digging up of the thousands and thousands of pipes, we won’t be able to drink the water unfiltered, probably for three or four years.” As if to make sure I’m grasping his words, he repeats himself, this time with a level stare.

As the MCRC report noted: “Flint may yet have another water crisis as, even when this contamination is gone, the pipes replaced, and the water safe, its price will likely be beyond the financial reach of many of Flint’s residents, but the impact of this crisis will, both physically and non-physically, be long lasting.”

Until March this year, Isaiah Oliver was the vice president of community impact at the Foundation for Flint, a charity that “raises and distributes resources to serve the long-term health and development needs of Flint children.” He looks like a younger, more bookish Will Smith and is a proud Flint resident who wants to see this problem entirely resolved. I ask if he would move if he could, like some of the other people I’ve spoken to. His answer is long and passionate.

“I don’t share the ‘if I could, I would leave’ [narrative] because I believe Flint is the canary in the coal mine. I love urban centres. I would be in a city just like Flint, and I would be afraid if I were drinking the water in Chicago. I’d be afraid if I were drinking water in Cincinnati, or in Houston. Because they could have the same issues that we have right now. And so I don’t believe that if I left and went somewhere else that life would just be different, and I'm willing to be on the front lines of trying to address the issues at home.” Addressing and overcoming those issues will take time, which is a luxury Flint cannot necessarily afford. “[People] are making that decision to leave, because they’re afraid, and rightfully so.”

Like many residents, Oliver struggles with the guilt that he might have inadvertently allowed his children to drink tainted water. “For the first year and a half of this, that was the time my now 3-year-old was actually using bottles, I was taking it straight out of the tap because the government said it was okay. And I was shaking up the formula," he says, miming the shaking of a bottle, "and I was giving it directly to my daughter. Grassroots groups were pushing information to the forefront about this water not being safe and I was saying, ‘Ennhhh, just calm down, we gotta trust the system; we don’t have any reason not to trust it.’”

“So when my [older] daughter comes home with a cold or the teacher says she’s counting by twos but her counting by fives is slower, I’m thinking [he sucks air between his teeth]. Part of me wants to say that this is just normal. But part of me as a parent says, Is that because I allowed my daughter to drink the water?”

Those thoughts are going to keep cropping up for the parents of Flint for the next few decades. According to Save the Children, there are about 26,000 Flint children for whom lead poisoning is a threat, and one January 2016 piece in the Detroit Free Press had the number of children under 6 in the city at 8,657, based on census data (and admitted this could be a conservative estimate). Once someone is exposed to lead, it is only detectable in the blood for 30 days, so blood tests taken after that time may not reveal the full extent of exposure in the city. This is the realm of “the unknown,” as the United Way’s Jamie Gaskin put it. And the lack of clear and precise information around who drank what when makes for a mess. It may take years for the effects of lead to show up; how do you go about remedying a problem when you are not even sure what your child may have been exposed to? What parents and caregivers can do, though, is read, and watch television — and what they have been told from day one is that high levels of lead in children have grim consequences.

At the time the results of Dr Hanna-Attisha’s study came to light, she said, unequivocally, “Lead poisoning is irreversible. This is not what our community needs.” In a 2016 interview with CNN, she said, “There is no pill ... no antidote for lead.” The EPA names the health effects of lead in children as follows: “behavior and learning problems, lower IQ and hyperactivity, slowed growth, hearing problems and anemia.”

Even so, there are things people can do to alleviate lead absorption, starting with a diet high in vitamin C, iron, and calcium. Over at Mission of Hope, a small church about 15 minutes’ drive from downtown Flint (and also the first organization to start handing out water on a continuous basis, back in September 2014), Pastor Bobby Jackson shows me his little community garden (the church has four garden plots in the vicinity), where the congregation planted vegetables to stall lead absorption in his community’s children. It's called the Garden of Love, but there are three more small garden sites close by. “We live in a food desert here in Flint. Last year, because of the water crisis, [we grew] dark, green leafy vegetables — collard greens, kale — things that would help absorb the lead. But normally it’s just fruits and vegetables.” He shows me a plum tree and tells me of the cherry trees that bloomed last summer. “Our goal is to provide a self-sustaining ministry for the homeless, the poor, and the mentally different,” says Pastor Bobby, which is how everyone refers to him. “The water crisis added another dimension.”

Sen. Ananich touts the programs available to parents. “A number of really great programs” — like Head Start, and those under the Flint Child Health and Development Fund umbrella — “are out there that can really sort of assess if there was damage done and then help remediate it. We don’t have to assume these kids are some throwaway generation. Love your kids, make sure your kids get good nutrition, don't assume that they're going to have lifelong problems — and if they do, there's things that we can do to make sure that they get the help.” His own son, Jacob, was born “right during the crisis,” in July 2015, and because he was adopted, Ananich is in the dark as to what his exposure to lead-tainted water might have been. “I have no idea what his prenatal care was. So, you know, it's one of those things where we...a lot of folks, I mean, myself included, we’ve all gone through it. It's sort of stages of emotions. So there's that feeling of like, did I not do enough to protect my own family? There’s anger. A lot of anger, a lot of stress.”

Gaskin of the United Way tries to be optimistic about the future of an entire generation of Flint’s kids. “The world needs to know that there are thousands of gifted children growing up in Flint, that will continue to be gifted and wonderful people,” he says. “This is not a community that is sort of steamrolled, like, lock the doors and go away, you know.”

He speaks enthusiastically of an initiative the UW is a part of, called Flint Kids Are. “[Flint kids are] bright, resilient, healthy. We need to really make sure that we push a narrative that acknowledges the problem and tries to help people become as whole as possible, but also really recognizes the richness that still exists here,” he says. “There are thousands and thousands of people that every day wake up in the morning as Flint residents, love the place that they're in, and want to see it thrive.” Also working directly with kids in the city is the Crim Fitness Foundation — its community education partnership with Flint community schools focuses on social services, nutrition education, and mindfulness programs.

“We’re working with a researcher now to document the effects of mindfulness and how that helps,” says Christina Ferris, director of advancement and outreach at Crim. “That constant training of the mind to be able to focus, to calm, can actually create some new neural connections.”

This is the point at which it is important to note that although Flint has received the bulk of media attention, it is far from the only community in the US where children have higher-than-normal blood-lead levels. In December 2016, Reuters conducted an investigationinto blood test results that revealed nearly 3,000 places with worse results than Flint. It is not possible to determine the exact source of the lead in these cases — the culprits range from crumbling water pipes to lead paint — but the common denominator for much of these neighbourhoods is poverty and old infrastructure. In one California neighbourhood, 13.6% of blood tests came back positive for high lead in children under the age of 6. And in March this year, the Pittsburgh city government announced it would spend at least $1 million to provide all residents with free filters, after tests showed high lead levels due to lead in some water lines.

Perhaps the research being undertaken in Flint will mean they, too, will soon be in receipt of similar programs being offered to the city’s children. “One thing that we really do that’s the most important thing — we provide hope,” says Ferris. “Kids have felt like they’ve been poisoned, and it’s a hopeless, frightening feeling.”

The rush to alleviate that feeling also sends a secondary message, which is that Flint is a resilient city and therefore likely to bounce back, eventually. Flintstones enjoy a reputation of being a particularly hardy sort. This is Auto City, after all, and the flint of their city’s name lives in their very skin. George Grundy recalls his younger days in other cities, and how his home city commanded instant understanding: “Because I said I was from Flint, there was an instant respect — we are cut from a certain cloth.” Jordan Paul agrees. “I'm proud to say that I'm still here and I know so many people who have chosen to stay here, not out of a spirit of stubbornness, or a spirit of this is the way I'm gonna do it.” Tony Atlis says he remains in order to speak truth to power. “We need more people...that are not scared of the consequences, that's gonna point the person that's wrong in the face, and say, 'Hey, you wrong.' That's what's made me not cut and run. Plus, I'm from Flint. I mean, if you can make it here, not New York, you can make it anywhere. You know, we tough. We built different.”

Paul also notes that this renowned resilience, while helpful for day-to-day living, is also subtly dehumanizing. “It's in a new form of persecution or discrimination, but it’s one of those things where, you know, I guess, we ain't new to this!” He laughs ruefully. “Flint has that industrial culture thing [that] speaks to just being tough as nails. I'm not saying that it's right, or ‘we can take it!’

“Nobody should have to take this.”

Crystal Rheaves didn’t live in Flint at the time of the water source switchover — she moved to Grand Blanc, a suburb about 15 minutes’ drive from downtown Flint, a few years back — but she now lives and works in the city. For her, the jig was up pretty much as soon as the announcement was made. “Growing up, you would hear stories of two-headed, three-headed fish in the water. You must be fishing for sport if you're fishing in the Flint River,” she says emphatically, after we slide into a booth at La Azteca, a Mexican restaurant near downtown Flint. “We as residents in this area already knew: You don’t mess with this water. So when they told us they were going to switch the water source, my family, we all knew: I'm not messing with the water.”

A few days later, as I walked along the Riverbank Park path, I encountered two fishermen baiting their line and inadvertently backing up Rheaves’ comments: This was not fishing for sustenance. One of the men told me he had previously caught sunfish and bass in these waters. “I just do it for sport. I don’t eat it,” he said with a small, knowing smile.

Rheaves’ knowledge of and interest in the water of Flint goes beyond merely that of a civic-minded resident: She has lupus, and to avoid compromising her immune system any further than her condition already does, she tries to be very careful about what she puts into her body. In Flint, that has meant an adherence to bottled water — a habit even older than the water crisis for Rheaves — and after the crisis, has translated into a whole-house filtration system, whose efficacy she is still a little shaky on. “To some degree, in the back of my mind, I still don’t feel good about it,” she says. “Because it’s not just lead — it's other things that they add into the water that are still problematic. It seems like another Tuskegee experiment — now we have to research and we have to follow all of these children throughout the duration of their life because this is going to affect them for the entirety of their life. It kinda makes you think [like] those conspiracy theorists: How much of this was pointed to this path?” On top of all that, Rheaves can’t help but fret about the ecological impact of all this plastic. “This is even worse on the environment. People already have it hard enough in this city, just making it, day to day; do you think people have time to recycle? You think they care about recycling?”

If the city and state want to begin the process of restoring trust and faith to Flint residents, there is one thing they could do, according to Rheaves. “They can start with charging Snyder,” she says passionately. “Say we're gonna hold who's responsible responsible.” (Speaking to the Detroit Free Press last December, Gov. Snyder said he had “no reason to be concerned" that criminal charges would be brought against him.) In the meantime, residents have brought lawsuits against, variously, the state and the EPA (a class-action lawsuit on behalf of more than 1,700 Flint residents, seeking $722 million), and in March a federal judge approved an $87 million settlement from the state for the city to find and replace water lines over the next three years. However, that same month, the state of Michigan removed the city of Flint’s ability to sue the state. On the issue of accountability, Sen. Ananich is unsure of the eventual outcomes of current indictments — the attorney general has indicted 13 people so far, including former emergency managers of the city. “I can't tell if it's a political thing or if they're actually going to go after them,” he says. He’s clear on how he sees it, though. “To me, it seems like this was negligence, this was malfeasance, this was criminal activity. It's different than making a mistake. You can make a mistake, and that happens sometimes. But knowingly misleading people and all the things that they did... I think the citizens of Flint deserve ... to make sure someone is held fully responsible for that.”

In April this year, the city sent out letters to about 8,000 residents, warning of possible tax liens (and the potential loss of their homes) for overdue water and sewerage bills. Earlier this month, city council members agreed to suspend efforts to impose those tax liens; both the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the ACLU had registered their unease, with Kary L. Moss, the executive director of the Michigan ACLU, calling the potential liens “unjust.” Prior to these warning letters, Ananich had thought trying to collect on outstanding water bills was a losing battle. “It's one of those things where people... this is what I’ve tried to tell the folks at State. You can insist as much as you want — they're not going to do it. They're just not gonna pay it,” he says emphatically. “It matters what [people] believe, and the fact they only gave us partial credits in the first place was sort of the first stick in the craw.” He accepts, to a degree, that water quality is improved overall but believes the program of water credits is ending far too soon, a view shared by the former mayor, Dayne Walling. “You continue to hear so many of us in the community saying, 'This isn't the right time for water credits to go away, this isn't the right time for the state to be stepping back,’” Walling says. “Because it's not about getting one test below a federal action level.”

“We need to be made whole,” says Ananich. “And a lot of dollars have been appropriated and that's important and I'll keep fighting for those, but we haven't been made whole yet. We haven’t been made whole on our water bills; we haven't been made whole on our infrastructure.”

Infrastructure is a constant Flint concern. Crystal Rheaves is adamant that pipe replacement projects need to be the top priority. “Come and fix the pipes,” she exhorts plainly. “[Snyder’s] talking about a surplus in Michigan or whatever. We still need our pipes fixed, OK? It shouldn't be a year, two years later that you started digging up the pipes.”

In March this year, the city awarded contracts worth $35.6 million to replace 6,000 water lines — the largest of which ($10.98 million) went to W.T. Stevens Construction, a black-ownedfirm.

But Rheaves believes Flint’s problems go beyond poisoned water, even if that’s the most pressing issue on the table. “It's like, there are so many different things they would have to do to restore trust. You can't even start with just the water: I have no trust in our government to say, ‘We care about your education, your children’s education’ — just basic, general things. I can’t trust you to do anything for me when you’re saying you’re gonna cut money for this and that, [but] you're spending money doing things that don’t even…” She cuts herself off, her voice higher and more impassioned than it had been at the beginning of our conversation.

The gleaming promise of Flint’s past has faded over time, as the automobile industry at the core of its economy has wound down. The very technology that so excitingly revolutionized and grew its fortunes has in many ways eaten itself. The city has instead been beset by the usual suspects that come with a big bust after a big boom; economic downturns hit black Americans harder than most, and the majority of Flint's residents are black.

The MCRC never used the phrase “environmental racism,” but it is a conclusion other people have already reached when it comes to describing the issues that caused and exacerbated the water crisis in the city. It’s a mantle a generation will be forced to carry. Sen. Ananich is already looking to that future. “There's a lot of things that keep me up at night,” he says, “but the fact that we're going to look back 20 years from now and that's going to be...that basically their government told them it's okay to be treated differently because of their skin colour, because of their income or because of the fact that they live in an older urban city, that's just not acceptable to me.”

He talks of the stress and anger in his city’s residents, which is “100% justified,” even as he recognizes it often feels impotent. “But a whole community living in stress and anger and frustration, even though it's 100% justified, it's just not effective for the community. There's times when I'm just furious about what happened to us, the fact that it's taken so long to get... It's termed a crisis, right? We're almost three years in and we refer to it as the ‘Flint water crisis’ every day. There shouldn't be a ‘crisis’ going on for three years. If this was Bloomfield Hills, or Beverly Hills, California, this would not be happening now.”

For all the environmental justice work that gets done at local levels, all cues inevitably are taken from the federal government’s actions, and recent developments do not paint a rosy future. Only hours into Donald Trump’s presidency, EPA officials were instructed to freeze all contracts and grants, and in an early budget plan from the Trump administration in March, there was a proposal to cut EPA funding that goes to the Great Lakes cleanup efforts by 97%. Later that same month, the EPA awarded $100 million to the Michigan DEQ for infrastructure repair (which had already been approved by Congress and the outgoing President Obama in late 2016). In Scott Pruitt, the president has selected an agency head who has often been diametrically opposed to the EPA — when he was the attorney general in Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the agency 13 times. Even with the promised money for Flint, if faith in the effectiveness of the EPA is at the heart of people’s pursuit of environmental justice, it must have taken a big hit over the last few months.

As we wind down our conversation, Rheaves sums up the problem as she sees it: If the lives of Flint residents genuinely mattered to the US economy in a tangible, measurable way, the response would have come sooner. “They don’t care. They’re not making it a point to get it fixed, because like I said, this area — we're not producing cars like we used to back in the day. It's not like we're producing something they need. We don't have anything that's demand-worthy to that degree that we're gonna matter in any sense. It's like, what incentive do they have to help us, besides doing the right thing? Doing the right thing obviously means nothing to them.” [bf]

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Satisfy Your Soul Bernhard Langer was one of the best golfers of his generation, twice winning the US Masters and at one time topping the world golf rankings. He said, ‘I had… won seven events in five different continents; I was number one in the world and I had a beautiful young wife. Yet there was something missing. ‘The lifestyle we all (especially us sportsmen) are leading – it is all about money and who you are and who you know and what you have and these things aren’t really the most important things. I think people who have these things, they realise that… there is still something missing in their life and I believe that is Jesus Christ.’ The spiritual emptiness that Bernhard Langer is describing is common to all humanity. One young woman said to me that she felt there was ‘a chunk missing in her soul’. You are not simply body and mind. You are a soul created for relationship with God. How then do you satisfy your soul? PSALM 63:1-11 Seek God day and night Spiritual ‘food’ is just as real as physical food and it satisfies us in a way that cannot be satisfied by anything physical. David was in the desert. He knew what physical thirst and physical hunger were like. But he also knew and experienced spiritual thirst: ‘My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water’ (v.1). And he knew what it was like for his spiritual hunger to be satisfied: ‘My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods’ (v.5a). His spiritual hunger and thirst are satisfied as he worships God: ‘So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open, drinking in your strength and glory’ (v.2, MSG). He lifts his hands as an expression of adoration, reverence and surrender: ‘Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands’ (vv.3–4). Lifting up hands is the oldest gesture of prayer. As Pope Emeritus Benedict writes, ‘This gesture is the radical form of worship... To open oneself to God, to surrender oneself completely to him.’ What do you do when you can’t sleep or you have wakeful moments in the night? David says that he worships and praises God, ‘I remember You upon my bed and meditate on You in the night watches’ (v.6, AMP). As he pours out his heart in worship day and night to God, David discovers strength and support. He writes, ‘Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me’ (vv.7–8). Lord, I seek you today. Thank you that you satisfy my soul as with the richest of food and quench my spiritual thirst. Thank you that your love is better than life. JOHN 10:22-42 Communicate with God through Jesus How do you and I communicate with God? Communication with Jesus is communication with God. Those who met Jesus understood he was claiming to be God (v.33). When he said, ‘I and the Father are one’ (v.30) and ‘the Father is in me, and I in the Father’ (v.38), there was no ambiguity in the ears of his hearers. His opponents understood it as blasphemy – ‘because you, a mere human being, claim to be God’ (v.33) – and they picked up stones to stone him (vv.31–33). Jesus communicated with his disciples and he continues to communicate with us. He says, ‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me’ (v.27). We see here the marks of a true Christian: Believing in Jesus There is a contrast in this passage between those who ‘believed in Jesus’ (v.42) and those who ‘do not believe’ (vv.25–26). Belief in Jesus means believing in him when he says, ‘I am God’s Son’ (v.36) and putting your trust in him. Knowing Jesus Jesus says, ‘my sheep listen to my voice. I know them…’ (v.27). To be a Christian is to recognise and follow the voice of Jesus. This is what defines a Christian – not so much knowledge about Jesus, but actually knowing him. This is then followed up by the wonderful declaration that Jesus also knows us. Following Jesus Jesus says, ‘they follow me’ (v.27). It affects your life. As Jesus said elsewhere, ‘By their fruit you will recognise them’ (Matthew 7:16,20). James wrote, ‘Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead’ (James 2:17). The primary evidence of faith is love. Those who follow Jesus will follow his example of love. Jesus promises every true Christian: ‘I give them eternal life’ (John 10:28). This is not just about quantity of life; it is also about quality. Jesus satisfies our spiritual hunger and thirst. In a relationship with Jesus we find this deep soul satisfaction that cannot be found anywhere else. Jesus promises that this relationship with him will go on forever. It starts now, but it is ‘eternal’ (v.28). Those who follow Jesus will ‘never perish’ (v.28). This is a gift (‘I give them eternal life’, v.28). It cannot be earned, nor can it be lost. Jesus promises, ‘no one can snatch them out of my hand… no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand’ (vv.28–29). There may be many struggles and temptations along the way, but ultimately the hand of Jesus and the hand of the Father are engaged together in protecting you. A Christian may lose their job, their money, their family, their liberty and even their life, but they can never lose eternal life. Thank you, Lord, that I can listen to your voice, that I can know you and that you give me eternal life. Thank you that you promise that I will never perish and that no one can snatch me out of your hand. Thank you that in this relationship I find soul satisfaction both now and forevermore. 1 SAMUEL 1:1-2:26 Pour out your heart and soul to God Is there something you want desperately from God? It is almost inevitable that at times in our lives we will feel ‘distress of soul’ (1:10, AMP). Never allow bitterness to eat away in your heart – but, like Hannah, pour it out to the Lord. ‘Crushed in soul, Hannah prayed to God and cried and cried – inconsolably’ (v.10, MSG). There is nothing more releasing than to pour out your soul before the Lord – to tell him what your problems are, rather than carrying them around yourself – and to ask him for the solution, and then to receive the peace of God (Philippians 4:6–7). Relief from her anguish comes to Hannah long before she actually sees the answer to her prayer. This is a beautiful picture of heartfelt prayer from the depth of the soul. ‘As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard’ (1 Samuel 1:12–13a). Eli accuses her of being drunk. She replies, ‘Not so, my lord… I am a woman who is deeply troubled… I was pouring out my soul to the Lord… I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief’ (vv.15–16). Eli tells her, ‘Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him’ (v.17). And as she left her face was no longer downcast: ‘She ate heartily, her face radiant’ (v.18, MSG). She knew deep down that God had heard her prayer and, indeed, ‘the Lord remembered her’ (v.19). In fact, God more than answered her prayer. Not only did he give her the child she longed for, she gave birth to six children (2:21). Meanwhile, ‘the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favour with the Lord and with people’ (v.26). This is the prayer we have prayed so often for our children. Hannah’s prayer after Samuel’s birth is a vivid demonstration of the soul satisfaction that she experiences through her relationship with God. She prays and thanks God that ‘those who were hungry hunger no more’ (v.5). The amazing revelation in Hannah’s prayer is that the supreme source of her joy is not her child, but in the Lord. She says, ‘My heart rejoices in the Lord’ (v.1). He is the source of soul satisfaction: ‘I’m walking on air... God brings life... he rekindles burned-out lives with fresh hope, restoring dignity and respect to their lives’ (vv.1,6,8, MSG). Lord, thank you for amazing answers to prayer, which you give when I pour out my soul to you. Thank you that sometimes you answer my prayers in remarkable ways. But whether I receive what I specifically ask for or not, thank you that you promise me your peace. Pippa Adds 1 Samuel 1:1–2:26 I’ve always been rather worried about Hannah and Samuel. Hannah had to give up her son. Samuel had to go off and live with an old priest and his two wicked sons – not an ideal nurturing situation. I’ve wondered how many years Hannah could get away with feeding Samuel before he was fully weaned. Hopefully, it was at least ten! Yet, in spite of the fact that it was not an ideal parenting situation – probably not much football and family games – he grew up with God, knowing God and learning to hear his voice. It is a relief that children can do well even if our parenting has been far from perfect. Verse of the Day ‘Jesus answered… “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me… no one will snatch them out of my hand”’ (John 10:27–28).