Water Wisdom: Using Water Wisely

2011's merciless drought of record here in Texas inspired me to create Water-Wisdom.org to promote Water Awareness, foster resource literacy and understanding, and inspire active stewardship and appreciation of our responsibilities and relationships with our Planet and its resources for joyful, conscientious, effective and enduring Stewardship.

We have infinitesimally and exquisitely intimate, profoundly interactive and powerful impacts and relationships with our Planet, its resources, and our local and personal environments. Understanding these ecological and biological dynamics germinates Awareness and internalized, conscious Stewardship of our Planet and its precious long-term health, beauty and resources.

While working for the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon, I served mighty forest ecosystems metabolizing natural and human phenomena.  Care-full, intelligent resource professionals were dedicated to supporting the vibrant, functional health of the Forest (which was not what the media wanted the public to believe). There, living and working in large-scale forest ecosystems, it became apparent that resource management is somewhat a misnomer.  This Planet is intrinsically designed to manage and take care of itself--but often struggles to digest and mitigate care-less human activities within the immediate scale of human time, purview, expectation, and comprehension.

Resource management is awareness management, reflecting Understanding, Appreciation, and Stewardship.

As an informal educator, I realized it is quite clear that in spite of well-publicized issues, 24-hour news cycles, Heartfelt concerns, and 21st century science and education, there are gaping chasms in the public understanding of very basic ecological truths, as well as grasping our non-negotiable dependence on this Planet's resources and its requisite resilience (and forgiveness). Conventional education often focuses on one-dimensional, insular facts without deepening our understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of our biological and ecological relationships with and within Nature. Technological innovation is a marvelous feature of civilization, yet can distort our collective perception into believing we can 'innovate' our way out of environmental troubles, or cleverly manage or cheat the symptoms of environmental illnesses.

Our Health depends on this Planet's health: clean water, clean air, renewable resources, energy, etc., not to mention the aesthetic, spiritual and healing values of Nature. Our Health also depends on economic vitality, which largely depends on environmental integrity. Expanding Awareness internally (individuals, businesses, organizations, governments, etc) encourages the widespread adoption and normalization of practices that ensure environmental integrity and regenerative resource sustainability: Stewardship.

Enduring, self-sustaining stewardship is an internalized ethic of environmental responsibility arising from Awareness integrated into all facets of daily living.  When we live from the revelation of resource relationship and responsibility, we effectively support the Integrity and Resilience of our Planet and its Resources. I believe people truly want to do Goodness for their Planet, so we begin by meeting folks where they are in their understanding of basic ecology and local resource realities.

Adopting practices of intentional, mindful and purposeful Stewardship inspired by understanding, appreciation and respect can efficiently support Nature's innate intelligence, design, resilience, creativity, productivity, beauty and beneficence. Shifting from disconnected levels of missed-understanding to integrated Earth-centric Stewardship practices and perspectives is a process of incorporating Awareness into our daily lives and culture. In that dynamic wisdom process, stewardship emerges, thrives and expands...in the Heart, not the head.

We can mindfully consider our discretionary interactions with Nature:

• What can Nature teach me about Nature~?

• What can Nature teach me about me~?

• How can I incorporate more connection with Nature into my life and space~?

• How can I live to ensure the healthy future of this Earth and my immediate environment~? 

• What can people teach me about human nature and the relational dynamics of understanding and perception~?

• What can I learn from and contribute to these interactions~?

• How can I empower the Health, Well-of-Being and Potential of Planet and people~? 

• What environmental legacies are being left in areas of high growth~? 

Environmental function and quality are dynamic, multi-factorial reflections of a wide spectrum of causes and effects. Accessible portals of objective ecology and inspirational information are vital steps on the path to water wisdom and Stewardship....to facilitate lasting, functional relationships with our Planet and its resources. Fear mongering, rage baiting, shaming, environmental posturing, pathologizing, polarizing, finger-pointing, politicizing, virtue signaling, scientific dueling, bullying, preaching, or criticizing unawareness are not strategies employed by Water Wisdom to generate resource Awareness and practical Stewardship thereof. Nor are farming pity, perpetuating drama, igniting outrage, emotional agendas, or encouraging hate or harm.  Encouraging anger or damage is NOT healthy activism.  Water-Wisdom.org was created to be an positive, productive, inviting, broad-minded, respectful portal for exploration, discovery, responsibility, perspective, Awareness and Stewardship through a convenient confluence of scientific and educational information, resources, inspiration and gratitude.

Water is the Fabric of Life...

...and this Earth is common, unifying ground...for all of us.

Water Wisdom is sourced from life-long study (B.S. in Forest Science with emphasis on Natural Resources Management from Texas A&M), a watershed of wisdom streams, agricultural influences, events, workshops and conferences. But the deeper Energy permeating Water Wisdom is my sincere, grateful, joyful, artesian Curiosity, Amazement, and Love of Nature and the Cosmos. Sharing my infinite wonderment, deep appreciation of Nature and integrated stewardship of Earth and Sky enlivens and inspires me and Water Wisdom. Being a loyal, caring friend to Nature is living my Heartfelt Love, Respect and Gratitude for the amazing, miraculous creations and companions this Earth and Cosmos are, within and surrounding me.

Since very young, Nature and its glorious beauty, astounding diversity, innovative adaptability and thrift, boundless creativity, masterful intelligence, unapologetic power, versatile utility, forgiving resilience and mosaic components fascinate me... inspire me... nurture me... mystify me... stir me. Trees, Water, Soil, Grasses, Plants, Stones and Sky have esteemed places in my Heart, as well as kindred creature friends and Spirits. Quantum Physics and human nature and health fascinate me, too, inspiring endless curiosity and exploration. I resonate with Buckminster Fuller's sentiment of "being an employee of the Universe". Serving a greater Good is Love...and...

Nature can always find Love for us to do~!

Thank you for living & sharing Water Wisdom.

Together, let's live our Gratitude for this Earth

and its life-giving Water~

H2OXO~

Anne Marie

Water flows over these hands.

May I use them skillfully to preserve this precious planet.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Research is proving Nature's healing capacities. Most of us did not need research to affirm the magnitude and diversity of feelings, experiences and effects when beholding or immersed in Nature~!  But research that validates the spectrum of Nature's wellness benefits is helpful in shaping policy, urban planning, architecture, public access, corporate wellness programs, hospital design, conventional medicine, rehab programs, schools and education and so much more: to facilitate connection to Nature through its integration into our daily lives~!

One of my favorite examples of how personally meaningful, powerful, influential and valuable Nature's companionship can be is Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the "Pastoral". Enjoy reading  how Beethoven treasured,  revered, needed and deeply loved Nature... and wrote this symphony to memorialize his intimate love affair with it.

Been awhile since you've enjoyed connection with Nature~?  Nature misses you.... and is there for you when you're ready for profoundly restorative, uplifting, inspiring, healing experiences.