The link below brings you to Ursula LeGuin’s latest blog, a long, thought-provoking  reflection on the election.

http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Blog2016.html#119Election

For today’s quote, here is an excerpt that points to the power of water.

“I know what I want. I want to live with courage, with compassion, in patience, in peace.

The way of the warrior fully admits only the first of these, and wholly denies the last.

The way of the water admits them all.

The flow of a river is a model for me of courage that can keep me going — carry me through the bad places, the bad times. A courage that is compliant by choice and uses force only when compelled, always seeking the best way, the easiest way, but if not finding any easy way still, always, going on.

The cup of water that gives itself to thirst is a model for me of the compassion that gives itself freely. Water is generous, tolerant, does not hold itself apart, lets itself be used by any need. Water goes, as Lao Tzu says, to the lowest places, vile places, accepts contamination, accepts foulness, and yet comes through again always as itself, pure, cleansed, and cleansing.

Running water and the sea are models for me of patience: their easy, steady obedience to necessity, to the pull of the moon in the sea-tides and the pull of the earth always downward; the immense power of that obedience.”

 

Of course, I cannot agree with the sentiment that water will always come out pure and cleansed again – that is what the protest at Standing Rock is all about. But the other reflections speak to me.