This special issue of The Arrow Journal came together around a core question: how do we navigate turbulent waters with clarity, strength, and suppleness? The articles, essays, poetry, and art contained within offer our readers diverse teachings on water through various streams of inquiry.
This special issue is also complemented by a seminar and podcast series featuring martial artists, non-dual spiritual practitioners, and movement leaders including Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown beginning April 7, 2026. We hope you will join us!
Join the editors and contributors for coffee on Friday, March 27th at 10am ET.
READ THE ISSUE:
Paid substack subscribers can access the issue through The Arrow Journal Archives section here on our homepage. Existing subscribers to The Arrow Journal may also access the issue by logging in to our website. All guests are welcome to purchase a digital copy here.
Issue Contents
Chief Editor’s Introduction
Brooke D. Lavelle
Doing “Nothing” as Ecological Practice
Derek Gladwin and Naoko Ellis
The Way of Water, the Way of (re)Existence: Embodied Contemplations on Grief, Precarity, and the Power of Transmutations
Megan M. Fowler
Something Worth Defending
Brooke D. Lavelle
The End of ‘The World’: Contemplation and the Decolonisation of the Self
Peter Doran
Shifting Tides, Strength in Yielding
Karen Barbour, Johanna Claus, Michelle Duffy, Penny Dunstan, Melina Ey, Rodrigo Hill, Jess Lemire, Liz Murphy-May, Jean-Louise Oliver, Meg Sherval
We Are All Holy Water
Alyssa Smaldino
swimming breast stroke as a swamped thing
Juliana Roth
Riding the Waves: Grief, Practice, and the Wisdom of Water
Ansje Miller
What Endures in Times of Collapse
Monika L Son
Navigable Waters: Binding Together to Find Our Way
Rachel Hale
Cover art and issue art by Elena Brower
Like Water: Seminar Series, Talks, and Workshops
April 3rd-4th: In Defense of Self and Others at the U of Southern Maine
April 7th-May 5th: Like Water Seminar Series
May 2nd: Be Like Water Workshop in Brooklyn, NY
Like Fire: Prayers for the Protectors
As a community of spiritual practitioners, believe that the more that we sense we are held in a field of care, or love, the more that empowers our courage and our capacity to act. The power of communal courage is palpable right now.
This is the spirit with which we invite contributions to the next issue in our elemental series, “Like Fire”, on themes of love, compassion, community, and political action. Submissions are closing soon.
While we remain committed to love as an engine and anchor of spiritual activism, we realize that love as practice can seem soft, naive, bypass-y, and even unobtainable. In the face of increasing state violence, ongoing genocide, and the collapse of life-sustaining systems, love may also seem insufficient for the task. Some might even say love lets people off the hook.
We are interested in taking these lines of inquiry seriously:
How is love an engine of spiritual activism and how do we deepen in it?
What have we learned through being well-loved?
How do we learn to love without (and in spite of) wounding?
How do we love through difference?
How do we learn to love powerfully, transformatively, and confrontingly?
How do we bring our love to bear politically?