Where Trees Convene

A bit of a preamble, before I get to the actual post: Sometimes religious language makes me uncomfortable—for many reasons. I say this to encourage you to keep reading a bit further if the title gives you pause. 

My upbringing and the influence of those around me often makes it difficult for me to openly discuss my spirituality.  That is something I am trying to get over as it is something very important to me.  Spirituality, for me, is my effort to seek meaning and connection to something larger than myself. I find meaning and connection in learning about the natural world—that learning may come from old beliefs or from cutting edge science. The best learning, I think, happens by establishing relationships within nature—relationships which transcend the walls that get built between science and story, between new and old. I learn both from my own relationships, and by listening to those who have formed such relationships. 

Because of the joy and connection of exploring the rich traditional of my ancestors, and because of the complicity and active efforts of my ancestors in oppressing other cultures’ spiritual practices and religions, I look only to my own cultural background to help inform any practices I engage in. 

I have a very complex relationship to Christianity which I won’t go into here except to say that I have generations of ancestors who followed that religion. Sermons, devotionals, and prayers all make up part of that traditional practice. While I have some discomfort in using those words, at the same time I find myself yearning for exactly those things—informed instead by content drawn from nature.  If I’m honest, some of what I hope to do here is to create some of the content I am seeking.  So now onto the post itself…

“Change is constant (be like water),” is one of the principles of adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds—a brilliant book which draws on the teachings of nature to inform our human efforts, actions, and interactions. This principle invites us to expect change and invest in our ability to adapt, rather than efforts to prevent or control change.  A colleague of mine referenced this in a meeting last week and it got me thinking about how much we can learn (or remember) from water.  

In the book Matter and Desire An Erotic Ecology, author Andreas Weber describes an “erotic worldview” –one informed by touch, embodiment, interaction in which the “contact between bodies forms the scaffolding of reality.” (“Bodies” refers to all matter, not just human bodies.) The following passage comes from the chapter called “Touch”:

“Water leaves behind traces on fixed objects that reflect its fluid nature. It provokes a question-answer game of the elements. Water that runs over sand—at low tide, for example—carves characteristic branching patterns that fan out across the ground. The traces of water look like water, though they are something different…Nothing is left without traces. And even when no one perceives it and when it seems to make no difference to any living being, every single event—a material condition, a change in phase, a gust of wind, a withering heave wave, an abrasive surge of sand—all of these things are experienced as changes by other bodies. Every touch leaves behind traces that contain something of both participants, because it reflects in part the forces of the impingement and in part the compliance of the touched.”

Water, by its nature, will have a different type of interaction with each type of matter it encounters. This remind us we are constantly in relationship with all around us – influencing others, moving from one space to another, setting events in motion, being asked to change and adapt by what we encounter.  The way water behaves and interacts holds beautiful lessons that can remind us both how we shape others, how we are shaped by them, and that we can do so while remaining true to ourselves.  

Call it a prayer, a devotion, an affirmation – I hope this offering fills something in you. 

May I Be Like Water