Let us be like water

Photos: Director Winona Bateman and volunteer Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan visited the Helena Farmers Market, to gather signatures for our letter to NorthWestern Energy's leadership asking them to invest in clean, renewable energy for our shared future. We now have 100+ signatures from Helena, and nearly 800 signatures on the letter overall. Help us hit 1,000 signatures and sign today!

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In the wake of multiple devastating rulings by our Supreme Court, I've been wrestling with how, why, and what-the-hell-do-we-do-now feelings, flushed with anger, frustration, and sadness. To be honest, I don't have much to say about the rulings or where we go from here in the large landscape of change that hasn't been said already. For me, I have needed to get really quiet and just breathe into the stormy feelings, thoughts, reactions, and fears, looking for a thread to follow out of my despair toward engagement because action is what gives me hope.

To try and stay grounded, I have been using a practice learned from one of my mindfulness teachers: She offered the image of a teacup holding water, "when things get stormy, breathe into it, and watch the water in your cup calm with your breath." At that time (and now), this seemed really hard because I was consumed with very big feelings. When I asked her, what do I do if there is too much water, what if my cup is overwhelmed, and overflows and floods, and maybe even cracks? She smiled and said, "let go of the teacup, and become a lake."

It is an expansive and grounding image: a lake, able to cradle cresting white caps, calming them slowly with deep mindful breath. For me, I’ve learned that this practice is necessary to be able to take action that aligns with my values, and with the future I want for our world.

Everywhere I turned this past week for guidance, there was water. Yesterday, as I prepared a gift for my friend who is also a volunteer, I opened the book I had chosen for her, An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, to the poem "Weapons, Or what I have taken in my hand to speak when I have no words" and my heart settled into its middle stanza (each one begins with a color):

"RED - Each of us is a wave in the river of humanity. If we break we bleed out. If we move forward together we are bound together by scarlet waters of belief. One side is war. One side feeds the generations. We are bright with the need for life."

In her amazing book, emergent strategy, adrienne maree brown asks us to look to nature for our organizing strategies and ways to build community, and she shares the work of other thinkers as well. She offers the following quote from Aisha Shillingford’s Intelligent Mischief as one vision for how we can practice adaptability, keep going and use our power, as our world shifts and changes:

“Water is versatile. It can be big and powerful, it can quench thirst, it can be healing, it can drown us. It finds its own level, always. That is, water is always seeking balance and has a place it has to go. It can be scarce, it is necessary. We’re utterly, devastatingly dependent on it. It’s beautiful and tragic and it feeds us sometimes. When we hold water back we can create power but there is danger when we remove the dam unexpectedly. It’s really flexible and adaptable. It takes the form of our containers. Bruce Lee says ‘Be like water…’ If we can fully understand the nature of water we can understand what we’re doing here.”

Getting out over the July 4th weekend to gather signatures on our letter to NorthWestern Energy's Board of Directors felt very hard at first, and I was grateful to have a partner. As we merged into the crowd at the Helena Farmers Market, and started to connect and have conversations, it reaffirmed for me how many people are concerned, and ready to join in for change. At the end of our short time at the market, I was elated (and really impressed with my canvassing partner Elisabeth, who gathered almost 75 signatures in 90 minutes!)

It was a great reminder that when we are isolated and alone with our thoughts and fears (and doom scrolling), we are like a lonely rain droplet on the window, but joining together in public spaces in conversation and collective action, we have the potential to become a wave. Isolation and despair are the tools and messages of oppression, we reject them when we reach out and connect.

My personal prayer (and practice) for this moment: Let us be like water. Let us skillfully inhabit the storm. Let us adapt and keep flowing. Let's fit into tight places and apply pressure, let’s pool together peacefully and release a tidal wave of change toward a thriving world for all.

-Winona Bateman, Director