ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the processes by which people confront and seek to address failures in their lives by looking at one specific material: holy water. It considers several key questions for evaluating when things go wrong by specifically interrogating the processes of knowledge-production when using materials to achieve desired effects. The chapter highlights how for certain urbanizing locales in Ethiopia, these sorts of material encounters should not be interpreted exclusively as reflections of local limits of access but as a conscious open- ended approach to everyday causality. Holy water is most visible in relation to healing activities and spiritual renewal. The capacity of holy water to mediate a morally unstable world establishes it as a means for leaving open the real possibility for the failure of clinical treatment. In Ethiopian Orthodox conceptual framing, potential sacramentality extends to a broader sacred ecology, such as liturgical prayers for propitious rains and bountiful harvests.
