#WaterMeditation #WaterThoughts
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Yesterday I went on my first solo excursion into #nature for many months, a cool misty morning near the sea. It had been a while, but nature is nice in that it’s still there where we are and was waiting for me.

I walked along the banks of a rushing #river, from the ocean inland. Walking upriver is so full of energy. It’s mostly walking uphill because that’s where the river is coming from. It’s like you’re fighting the current itself although you’re alongside it.

When I’m alongside rivers, I often wonder about where they come from. What does the merest trickle way up at the top look like? Where is all that water coming from? I mean, it’s flowing. It’s pouring. It’s gushing. Down, down, down, drawn irresistibly by gravity to the sea. So that must mean there’s an enormous amount of water being dropped somewhere. And I realized it all just comes from the sky. The pounding rain, the melting snow pack. Maybe sometimes it’s underground springs. But mostly it’s from the sky.

SO MUCH WATER. There was water everywhere on my walk, not just in the river itself. The trees are towers of water, rising up over my head, every branch, leaf, and needle holding their own flow. The birds calling to each other are bundles of flying water. The flies and bees little buzzing cloisters of water. The ground cover that carpeted every inch of the forest not in my immediate path was a bouquet of bursting growth of moisture; ferns, clover, moss, flowers, a veritable botanical garden of water taking infinite shape. The muddy path even was a testament to the ever-presence of water.

I breathed in the water, and breathed it out. I felt it accumulating upon and within my clothing as the sweat from my exertion mingled with the moisture in the air. I am walking water too.

I reached the place where my forward motion had to end because warning signs indicated the path ahead was washed out. Washed out!

Turning around, I was now walking with the flow of the river. Things became gentler, almost calm. I was going with the flow. I hadn’t noticed the resistance implicit in going up river until I turned to walk down. Now it was as though a kind hand was guiding me back down, down, down, to where the water exhausts itself into the misty sea.

My time with the river was complete. I’d felt its rush and flow. I’d heard and seen the life in and around it. I’d cleared my mind and regained my connection.

I'm sharing some of the sights and sounds, here and in the next few posts. Find your river today.

This person's book looks really interesting! On my TBR list

'A New Age of #Water Is Dawning'
#TimeMagazine
https://time.com/6300886/climate-change-water/

#WaterThoughts #WaterIsLife #ClimateJustice #climate

#WaterMeditation #WaterThoughts

Today I'm thinking about #waves, the moon and the water and the constant back and forth of the tides.

When do we feel the waves? Maybe when we're walking on the shore and the waves roll in, pushing against our ankles. If we go in deep enough, we feel our body being pulled one way or the other. The waves can pull our feet out from under us. There's a power to the waves. It’s irresistible.

We talk about waves of #grief. Waves of #anxiety, waves of #fear. Usually we’re speaking of something that threatens to overwhelm us.

But waves can also rock us gently.

Why do we rock our #babies when they're tiny? We know a gentle back and forth motion, governed by the heartbeat and the swing of our own bodies, soothes them. We move from foot to foot with the child in our arms. The child is comforted and becomes relaxed, they close their eyes and you can gaze smiling on their face.

Think of being on a boat, moored in a safe harbor. The water underneath us is rocking, rocking, rocking us into relaxation.

What if our waves of grief or anxiety or fear are rocking waves and not overwhelming waves? Maybe that wave that comes is to comfort us in our grief. To reassure us in our anxiety. To love us through our fear.

When the wave comes, let yourself experience it. Let it hold you up. Let your body process it. The wave can be there to comfort you, to bring you back into sync with your nature. As you calm, feel the rocking, the soothing.

Maybe the waves that come are really to do what you do to that precious infant, holding you in their arms, rocking you back and forth until you again feel safe.

So don’t fear the waves. Close your eyes, and picture the water that holds you in its arms gazing down on your face and smiling.

#meditation #peace

#WaterMeditation #WaterThoughts

The other day we had a whole day of #rainbows.

We had to do a road trip up the coast and then inland on a misty day, and the rainbows were everywhere. They were following us.

We'd be driving along and our angle to the sun would change as we turned a curve, and a rainbow would appear outside my window. We'd see them way off in the trees. We'd see them over the parking lot. It was a day of rainbows.

Rainbows are amazing because when you break it down, all they are is the sunlight refracting through a certain kind of water vapor. The #rainbow looks like it's an independent thing in the sky, but it is 100% dependent on your eyes to exist. The rainbow you’re seeing has no reality if you’re not looking at it. They're all about where you're standing in relation to the water vapor and the sun. The sun needs to be behind you at a certain angle to the water droplets so that you get the effect of the light being refracted through the prism.

Rainbows therefore are all about perspective.

Physically, that's all that's happening. But mentally a rainbow appearing across an overcast sky is always so astonishing and refreshing and hopeful and glorious. You’ll be talking about something and mid-sentence you’ll say, “Oh, there's a rainbow,” and then you stare and stare at it as it changes solidity and form right before your eyes.

Sometimes it’s a full rainbow across the whole sky in a big huge glowing arc. Then the clouds change, and the rainbow shifts, and parts of it blot out, and other parts get brighter, and then it glows again for a moment before it is gone.

Rainbows blaze and then they fade. They are such a miracle.

That day, we saw them out over the ocean. We saw the bottom 30 degrees of one on the left and then way over on the right there was the other bottom 30 degrees. We saw a huge glowing light across the entire sky. At some points there was even a double rainbow as the light refracted multiple times through the vapor.

Often a rainbow seems right at the edge of a super cloudy, super overcast area and a super bright, beginning to be sunshiny area. They are the boundary between light and dark.

I love rainbows. I love all that they have meant to humanity. For all of history ever since the early humans raised their eyes upward to see this amazing thing in the sky, rainbows have always given hope, and the joy of them is deep in our race. That rainbows mean something to us, even though perhaps in the cosmic sense, they don't mean anything at all.

Where are the rainbows in your life? What do rainbows mean to you?

#WaterMeditation #WaterThoughts

For today's meditation, you may need to suspend the usual societal squeamishness about bodily fluids. If that can work for you, please enjoy the following.

Today I thought about coming from the water. Specifically of a process that gave me a birth.

When we talk about the sperm impregnating the egg, it's not flying through the air. It's not digging into a tunnel. It is swimming. It is swimming through what is predominately water to get to the prize, the egg.

Our very inception occurs in water surrounded by water. And then, as we stay surrounded by water, the amniotic fluid is filling our nose, and this is the water our newly developing arms and hands and legs are moving in. I don't know if we have a sensation of floating, because there is still gravity. But we do have it surrounding us every moment as warm, thick water. In the birthing process, we emerge from the water. I can almost envision it as coming headfirst out of a body of water into the air for the first time.

So today in meditation, I contemplated being out in the air for the first time. Our accustomed source of oxygen and food is cut off, and we are forced to take that first breath of air into our lungs to replace the liquid that had been bringing us oxygen.

What a jolt to the system. Most of us can now breathe deeply, and it's very rewarding. But I wonder what that first breath was like.

Hold your breath. Hold your breath for as long as it's comfortable. Imagine being that babe with all the oxygen coming to you through the umbilical cord. And then you're out in the air for the first time, you have to get oxygen on your own. Take a breath. You've taken the first step into self-sufficiency. Something you have been reliant on the womb for you are doing on your own.

Then comes a moment where you experience hunger. You have to call out for food, food presumably comes to you, and you need to take it in on your own through your own digestive system. This is your second step into your ability to do things on your own.

The water before connected you to the whole of the human race. You were not on your own. You were a part of something. Now you are a single unit and will be for the rest of your life. Yet you are still part of something. It's the mystery of being separate but one.

If you are a person who gives birth yourself, you'll become the encapsulation of water for that new life. Do you still have all that water?

It's a moment we only have once, this emergence from the water. What does that mean to you? How can you reconnect?

#WaterThoughts #BookReview #Bookstodon

#HighlyRecommend:

#BecomingKin: An #IndigenousCall to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future, by #PattyKrawec.

From the book’s description: “The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. . . . Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity?”

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/becoming-kin-an-indigenous-call-to-unforgetting-the-past-and-reimagining-our-future_patty-krawec/34866808/item/51861456/#edition=64061719&idiq=51861456

I found much of this book to be a pure meditation on what could be, and it invited me to envision a future where all life is included and all the Earth is respected. Krawec made me want it, and she made me think it is possible. And it had fascinating things to say about #water.

It may be hard, but we can do it.

#WaterMeditation #WaterThoughts

Today I contemplated my #WaterBottle.

Perhaps you, like me, have a water bottle nearby as you are reading this so that you can take a sip whenever you are so moved. Maybe it’s a translucent bottle and you can see how much there is, or it’s opaque and when you lift it you can feel the water sloshing within.

Think about the water in the bottle. It most likely came from a #reservoir or an #aquifer, or some other source that you’ve chosen or that your municipality uses.

That water probably came from rain that fell either on a #mountaintop to create #SnowPack that would later melt into a #river to fill a reservoir or that fell on the ground and seeped through the #soil and #rock to refill the aquifer.

Water from a puddle outside my house might have evaporated and traveled the long miles between us to bathe your water source in a wild #thunderstorm or a gentle #SpringShower. Then it flowed through the system to wind up in your bottle.

Take a sip now. Feel the water in your mouth. Feel how your body yearns for it, welcomes it. Let it slide down your throat to be literally incorporated into your body, replenishing and cleansing every cell of your being.

Water makes possible every function you need to stay alive. We share the same relationship with water. We all need it in the same way. No matter what our differences, we are united in our relationship with water.

Remember the water today.