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JENNIFER GREENE: Water

(From BIODYNAMICS Jan/Feb 97)

Water As Our Helper In The Task Of The Rejuvenation of Agriculture

by Jennifer Greene
Water Research Laboratory, Blue Hill, Maine

At the close of the recent Biodynamic Conference in Minneapolis,
Chuck Beedy announced that next years theme would beWater and
that it would be under my watch, as it were. I immediately thought
that it would be good to get under way as soon as possible with a
group of people to begin exploring this. So in December, I came to
Kimberton Hills, Camphill, to work with Helen Zipperlen who is
carrying the impulse for an Earth Day celebration and week long
festival on the theme of Water in April, 1997 and to work with
Chuck Beedy and with Hartmut von Jeetze who gave us such rich
imaginations in his Sunday talk in Minneapolis.

When I contemplate waters nature and our role as human beings as
stewards and our need to change and deepen our consciousness about
it, I wished that everyone could become students of water!. I
began thinking about how this could come about. So here it is.

We, who use water everyday, need to reassess our relationship to it.
We drink it; we need to, so that the dissolution and building up
processes and transformation of substances in the body can take
place. This is going on continuously, in various and many rhythms,
in millions of cells because life has become active in forming and
proportioning to give spirit a dwelling place. We find our
relationship to water in another way, as well, in our need to bring
into balance our sense of well being: we seek those places where
water is, in our times of spiritual and soul regeneration. We also
ask water  or rather, take for granted  to become the vehicle, the
means to carry our waste away, to take it out of our consciousness.
This, it does, selflessly.

So our use requires of us a responsibility to come to understand
water as an element for life. We need to study it, in its own terms
and on its own turf. We need to see its many faces, we need to see
what it likes to do and how. We need to come to know it as we are
inwardly drawn to someone we wish to know in an intimate way. This
goes way beyond water as simply, H20.

How can we begin to find our way into this?

Water, as it appears, is full of open secrets. One that comes
immediately to mind, as we contemplate life, is that while life is
at work upon and with substances to create organisms, the space
where this takes place is a watery medium. During the gestation
period, every organism is surrounded by the watery element.
Surrounded and weightless, the most wondrous things take place.
Water, then, can be seen as the  mediator between the universal
individuating itself as organisms. We see this leitmitiv again and
again as water serves, or is the bearer of the balancer, or the
bringer back to the middle, or the seeker of the place of
equilibrium. We can see how water moves as it manifests itself
between fast and slow as in the meander, between light and dark
as in the rainbow, or particularly luminous or dark clouds, between
gravity and levity in the phenomena of buoyancy or in the great
circulations of weather or in the play of microclimates. Water
reflects and shows us stillness, quiescence. This disappears when
movement comes. Water finds or creates boundaries and surfaces.

To prepare for the conference, how would it be to observe and study
the many ways that water manifests as an element for life on your
farm and in your garden or in your locale? What is the character or
behavior of water there? If there is a stream or river, how does it
flow? Is it swift or slow? What are the qualities? What creatures
and what plants and other manifestations of life find their home
there? What does this tell us about the environment? What about
the dews, fogs, mists, frosts and snows? What are the qualities of
rains? The Bushman say there are she rains and he rains.

Our suggestions are the following:

l) Keep a diary, daily. This can be with an emphasis on weather
observation in general and a place with a special microclimate
specifically.

2) Visit one spot of your choice (the same one) everyday. Water will
manifest anywhere to one degree or another, so it does not matter
what you choose.

3) Before going to sleep in the evening, recall in as orderly manner
as possible, as much detail of your special place. If a detail
cannot be recalled, replace it with another. By doing this, our
capacities of observation are sharpened.

This can be in addition to recalling special events of the day just
finished and to consider essential tasks be met the next day.

4) After three months, say, visit your special place together with
some friends, to observe, receive, and share what has been
experienced. This could be a kind of mini-offering of our human
endeavor as servants of Agriculture.

My hope is that we can then develop this conference out the
imaginations of the watery organism as it manifests in this country
and as you are working with it. This would be a good preparation and
a good beginning for our schooling.

In the following journals and in other communiques, we will bring
further developments. Please feel welcome to call us with whatever
you have been inspired by. This would be very fine, indeed.

Contact Jennifer through biodynamics@biodynamics.com

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