How to Change the Way We Think about Water - We need to shift our understanding of water as a commodity to an appreciation for water as a human and environmental right.

By Jennifer Greene, World Pulse. Posted April 11, 2008.

We need to shift our understanding of water as a commodity to an appreciation for water as a human and environmental right.

All human beings are deeply affected by water and its movements. When we go on vacation we go to the water. We slide over it, across it, through it. We swim in it. We take part in water rituals and want to be nurtured by water … we thirst for it.

Yet water, in a very deep way, is a women’s issue. It is vital to the role women play in caring for their families. Women bathe and nourish their young, often tend the crops, and are the keepers of the waters. When fetching potable water requires distance, there is less time for the family and abject poverty and disease result. 
A Charged Stillness:

I have never thought of myself as an activist, but I am active on the path of getting to know water on its own terms. The activism comes in relating water’s story as I read it, in sharing the wonder of it, and helping to awaken a consciousness of it.

My task is to find the language of water and to learn it to the best of my ability.

My relationship with water began on the Vermont farm where I grew up. As a child, I stood in mud puddles, watching water enter finely silted brown pools. Such amazing forms in this laboratory! Aware of nature’s surging flows, and of the songbird’s bright joy, I’d walk in the crunchy, melting snow and listen to the drops of maple falling.

Now I work to change how we think about water — to shift our understanding of water as a commodity to an appreciation for water as a human right, an environmental right.

This work reaches back to great activists of our modern times. Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, among others, showed us that outward activism arises out of a charged stillness within. Here, in active listening into a situation or condition, we hear and see what to do.

It is a special kind of listening — a sensitive and intimate dialogue. When one realizes that one is truly being listened to, there is no resistance, only openness and receptivity and the speaker receives and the listener gives back.

Such is the case with water.

Where water can tell its story, on its own terms, there is language and communication. My task is to find the language and to learn it to the best of my ability.

Learning in Nature’s Laboratory:

The most fruitful way to see the hidden nature of water, is to observe water, to listen to water, and to comprehend how it behaves as it moves.

When we take away water’s flexibility, it’s balancing capacity, we take away its role as a mediator between life and death.

When we listen, we learn that water serves life through processes of change and rhythm. Water motion is always organized, fluid and flexible. We can understand it as though reading someone’s “body language” to assess their state of being.

Water that is allowed to move according to its own nature cleanses itself and sustains life. This is our model for the future. If water is not allowed to move and change and be open to organizing principles, if it becomes stagnant, then it becomes dead.

When we observe water and begin to ask questions of it, allowing it at each level to tell its story, we realize we’ve accessed something deeper than what can be seen by the eyes.

Sit by a stream and watch the water move. See the form water takes as it moves over rocks … It flows smoothly and freely, slipping downward into a gulley. See that the bank is still and solid and yet continually changed by the river. See that when water moves freely, it is answered by a system of organic forms, movements and rhythms — an integrated system of life processes and substances that allows water to mediate all life needs in order to exist on earth.

If water becomes stuck or hindered, static or gummed-up, it can’t do its work. We need to understand that the implications of this are far, far reaching. When we take away water’s flexibility, it’s balancing capacity, we take away its role as a mediator between life and death.

Inside our bodies, water is the transporter of substances. It dissolves things…builds up calories and proteins. It flows incredibly precious materials from one place to another and transforms things in the body. We become ill when our water is not easily distributed, not able to move. We get a clot, or have an aneurysm.

The same happens with our earth. We dam water without any understanding of what’s happening and how it needs to flow. Dams that are not being used are not good for the environment and should be torn down. Dams that are necessary can be used judiciously where people understand what the environment is and allow the river to thrive.

Systems in Motion: Our Model for the Future.

Without water, there is no life. Global environmental mismanagement affects the roots of family, village and climate. Water is the metaphor for transformation in the sacred rituals of peoples all over the world.

We say water is good when it doesn’t have any viruses. We say it’s good when it doesn’t have any nuclear components, when it’s odorless and colorless. In other words, water is good when it’s not bad. But what else is good water?

Most indigenous peoples have an understanding through metaphor of what good water is. And water is the metaphor for transformation in the sacred rituals of peoples all over the world. The metaphor is not an empty thing. It’s real, and it comes from an innate knowledge of water. By relying on quantitative measurements, Western science misses out on a whole realm of knowledge found in the attributes of water. We can access that knowledge if we learn to look at water in a different way.

What is most important is that we don’t try to piecemeal water but that we try to find its indivisibility, its wholeness. Water can show us these things if we systematically observe it and know its story.

When we look at the whole rather than just the parts; context more than the so-called objective; quality more than quantity; networks more than hierarchies; and processes more than structures, we access a more complete picture of water, and we come to understand what makes it sacred.

So we can say that water serves life, yes. But we can also do more. We can also show how, and that makes things much more comprehensible to policy makers and to educators. It changes the very way people breathe, and it touches their souls.

We are adding this to education, so that along with traditional ways of monitoring water quality, we teach the other side of water, too — the life-supporting side. In knowing how water serves life, we get beyond the pollutants and see solutions. It’s beautiful, it’s totally exciting, and at the same time humbling.

See more stories tagged with: water, water shortage, water spirituality
Jennifer Greene is the executive director of the Water Research Institute of Blue Hill, an organization that helps individuals and policy makers understand water’s qualitative properties and behaviors.

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 http://www.waterresearch.org/

The Water Research Institute of Blue Hill.

Jennifer Greene, Executive Director

Currently, Jennifer Greene serves as a leading spokesperson for environmental concerns and the nature of water. She is an outspoken advocate for the need for wholistic education and research into understanding the processes of Nature and Sustainability. Her in-depth experience and research has led her to conclude that we must become better observers of the processes of Nature, for in our current reductionist thinking and analytical processes much is being lost of the whole picture. She is attracting increasing attention from the international community, including the United Nations.

In 1980, Greene pioneered the work with flow forms in the United States. Since this time, she has also given water workshops at schools, universities, and environmental conferences in the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, and most recently in Switzerland. Through these presentations with hands-on experiments and with observation of water flow phenomena, the forms and patterns reveal the more hidden nature of water, leading to a deeper understanding of this element as a purveyor of life. The phenomenological approach with water is based on the work of Theodor Schwenk, author of the book “Sensitive Chaos”, a classic in this field, and on “Understanding Water” published by institute for Flow Sciences in Germany.

In 1985, after consulting Dr. Kathe Seidel of the Max-Planck Institute and the pioneer of wastewater and sludge treatment, Greene worked with Lawrence Banks and Scott Davis of Reed Systems, Inc. in the United States. They brought the work from the laboratory to successful field applications in over 100 municipal, EPA, and state regulatory approved reed bed installations in a dozen states. There are currently over a million square feet of constructed wetland beds under the aegis of Banks, Davis, and Greene. Greene is consulting on wastewater, sludge, and surface water management in Canada and in the United States.

In 1984, Greene trained in Switzerland in the Drop-Picture Method of diagnosing water quality and has the only Drop-Picture laboratory in the U.S. The Water Research Institute, of which she is the director, works in association with the Institut für Strömungswissenschaften (Institute for Flow Sciences founded by Theodor Schwenk). She works on phenomenological studies and has worked on water quality research using the Drop-Picture Method and phenomenology based on the work of Goethe and Rudolf Steiner.

Articles

Year    Title
2000    “Movement, Quality and the Drop-Picture Method,” Goetheanum - Natural Science Section Newsletter
1999    “Qualität: Spracher des Lebens,” Ita Wegman Bericht Michaeli, published by Ita Wegman - Fonds für soziale und therapeutische Hilfstatigkeiten.
1991    “Water - A sense Organ for the Life of the Earth,” Bio-Dynamic Quarterly, published by The Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association.