The Ethical Will

Reflections in the water, from Aotearoa.

In college, my dear professor and mentor Katherine Kurs asked her students to write what she called an Ethical Will. To the best of my recollection, her invitation was that we compose a simple document of reflections and requests we might have for our loved ones, should they survive us. The act of writing the Ethical Will is, in itself, a meditation on what we have learned so far in our lives, what we’ve come to value, and what lessons we care to impart from this journey.

I thought of this prompt as I spent my birthday alone this year in Aotearoa’s Golden Bay—a sun-kissed, soft and glowing landscape on the coast of the Tasman Sea, blessed with many sacred springs and waterfalls. I remembered messages shared by powerful Māori women I met—mana wahine Jessica Hutchings and Erin Matariki Carr, whose connection with Papatūānuku, our earth mother, imprinted deeply upon me.

I felt an energy I can only describe as generosity pour forth through the waters. I felt this all while holding the polluted waters and dredged, holy rivers of Southern Appalachia, hurt after the devastation (I mean massive, shattering, jagged, numbing, f-d up devastation) caused by Hurricane Helene this September. Reflections and teachings from my pilgrimage to these crystal rivers sank unlanguageably deep into my own body of water.

Staring into a small whirlpool, a memory of Katherine’s assignment emerged, as well as the following directions—elements of my Ethical Will:

1. Learn the name of plants. Speak their names to yourself, to them, and to the people around you. You will learn their stories, their medicines, and histories of their relationships. The world will become alive with these stories. The forest will no longer be a “green screen,” but an animated landscape ripe with invitations for connections and exploration. You will never be alone.

2. Say hello and farewell to places—your friend’s dahlia patch, your lover’s couch, the hotel room, the office, the far temple shrouded in mist. Demarcating your passage through space and place creates memories that hang like pearls on a string, leaving a trail of beauty before you, and behind you. I sometimes imagine myself on my death bed, running my fingers over these pearls of my memory like mala beads, reciting mantras of thanks as my blue-veined, bony hands trace their glowing contours. This is a wealth and a resource like none other.

3. Absorb the seasons. Take the sun in with your eyes closed. Lay atop a warm stone. Feel the snow sink into your bones. Feel your leaves fall. Push through the cold earth with your green enthusiasm! Imagine yourself as a battery; you can charge yourself with the energy of the seasons, and draw upon this energy to regulate yourself when needed. In the white silence of winter, delight yourself with that first red of a bloom. In the mad, busy, dog days of summer as the sun rides high ‘til zenith come, you can be the still and cold of ice.

4. Listen closely as the first bird sings her first song in the morning. When you hear that song, remember those trills send vibrations into the water that has collected in the quiet dark of night, onto the leaves drenched in dew. That dew receives those songs, and as the sun rises, their songs rise too. You, too, can sing these songs into the water, so they may be carried into the clouds. You will sing not as a self-conscious human, but as a self-evident animal.

5. Learn songs, poems, and incantations for the water. Many cultures of the world have created and shared these special ways of communicating with the elements. For inspiration, I recommend the book Earth Prayers arranged by Elizabeth Roberts. Speak them and sing them to water. Acknowledge their source. Recognize water in all you see. It will awaken you to the master design and miracle of this place.

Aotearoa—land of the long white cloud—thank you for moving me so deeply. Thanks to Katherine for the invitation to reflect in this way.

Thanks for another year 💫