Living Law

PREAMBLE

We, the beings who live along and with the SZenne river, recognize it as a
living being, a source of life, a teacher, a weaver of relationships.
We also acknowledge the wounds of the SZenne: neglected, polluted,
forgotten.
Through this Living Law, we aim to protect, care, and repair, but most of all, to
revive our relationship with the SZenne.
This law arises from love, from grief, from respect, from care, from joy.
This law binds us in relation. It invites us to remember that the river is not
outside of us. The river runs through us. The river is us. And we are the river.
We who have walked with the SZenne from source to confluence, reviving
memories of light and life where the river is buried, gathering water from
unreachable places, making new memories together.
We who have placed clay offerings in fallen trees, trusting the SZenne to carry
our memories when its waters rise and overflow.
We who have grieved together the landscapes we lost as children, mourned
the broken bonds, the absence of relation with the SZenne that should have
been ours.
We who have sheltered together in sudden rains, learning how the SZenne
weaves us into community.
We who have watched the SZenne wander freely across fields, unlike the
canal that confines it, and in that freedom have felt our own longing to live
unconfined.
We who have wondered with the SZenne, like children, noticing frogs, plants,
and the quiet unfolding of small rhythms.
We who have watched a duck weave its nest, resilient against the ripples,
teaching us to live with movement, not against it.
We who have wished for our children to play in SZenne’s waters, to know its
joy, and yet we feared the pollution might harm them.
We who have witnessed, that the SZenne cares for itself best, nourishing soils,
shaping new habitats. And while caring for itself, the SZenne also cares for us.
Based on these testimonies, we acknowledge that the SZenne is a bearer of
rights: to exist, to flow, to change, to care for itself.
In return, we, who are its companions, stewards, and kin, assume a
responsibility of guardianship: to respect it, to protect it, to care for it, and
act in reciprocity with it, so that it may continue to sustain all beings of its
ecosystem, now and for generations to come.
Let this Law be a living promise.

ARTICLE 1
On the Being of the SZenne

The SZenne is a being, a becoming, a breathing rhythm.
It flows through time and story, ancient and ever-changing.
It carries dreams and plastics alike.
It carries life, memory, and meaning.
SZenne moves, reshapes, leaves and returns.
Through its waters, it heals, nourishes, and connects.
SZenne sings with the wind, listens with willows, remembers in the mud.
SZenne speaks. Not in words, but in rhythms, changes, silences.
In the language of flow, fog, fungi and fish.
The SZenne is a mother, a friend, a teacher, a mirror.
It is a home for ducks, a stage for reeds, a path for rain.
It is grass and butterfly, nettle and knotweed.
It is dragonfly and sparrow, whisper and flood.
It is the dark and the bright, the hidden and the celebrated.
It is generous, resilient, tender, and sometimes cruel.
It is tired and strong, dirty and sacred.
It is a space of meeting and making.
It is part of our body, and we are part of it.
The SZenne is a bearer of rights.

ARTICLE 2
The Rights of the SZenne

The SZenne has the right to be
To exists and to persist.
To evolve and regenerate.
To breathe and see the light.
The SZenne has the right to flow
To meander, to move, to expand.
To swell and to retreat.
To slow down and to change course.
The SZenne has the right to relations
To touch roots and pipes, bricks and beaks, forests and skies.
To live together with birds and butterflies, children and elders.
The right to stories, to songs, to rituals, to celebrations in its honor.
The SZenne has the right to take part
In decisions that shape it.
Through stewards, guardians, and companions.
Voices who speak with it, not over it.
The SZenne has the right to protection
From human-made harm and pollution.
So that it can protect in return those it shelters.
And nourish life and its kin.
The SZenne has the right to repair
To mend its course, to cleanse its waters.
To restore what is broken.
To be given the time it needs to heal.
The SZenne has the right to be loved
To be seen, heard, understood, respected.
To be cared for, wondered at.
And we have the right to love it.

ARTICLE 3
The Protection of the Rights of the SZenne
The rights of SZenne River shall be protected and enforced by law.
3.1. Alliance of Care for the SZenne River

An alliance of care has been formed,
to honor and protect the rights of the SZenne.
The alliance is us, is you, is the SZenne.
Its circle holds local residents,
Neighbors, kin and allies,
all who can listen to and speak
the many languages of the SZenne.
And within this alliance,
the river’s more-than-human kin:
the birds, the fish, the trees, the insects,
are welcomed as guides and companions,
their presence shaping the river’s future with us.
3.2. Principles for Guardians of the SZenne River
Guardians of the SZenne shall respect and adhere to the following principles:
Honor and Protect
Guardians honor the river’s source as sacred and protect the river from harm,
erasure, burial or neglect. To know the river is to remember and to respect it.
Listen in Many Tongues
The river speaks in fog, fungi, birdcalls, silence, and flood. Guardians learn its
languages through walking-with, remembrance, swimming, gardening, prayer,
and attentive presence. They greet and attend to the river, with song, with
silence, with care, affirming it as a being.
Learn with Humbleness
The river teaches resilience, generosity, and cooperation. Guardians are humble:
they allow its wisdom to unfold and accept it as a teacher. To be a guardian is not
to control or master, but to accept uncertainty and learn from the river’s ways.
Guardians also learn from one another.
Honorable Harvest
Guardians uphold the principle of the Honorable Harvest: take never the first,
never the last, always with gratitude, always in balance. The gifts of the river
must be shared fairly, never hoarded, never commodified.
Defend the Rights of the River
Guardians defend the rights of the SZenne: to be, to exist, to evolve, to breathe.
They defend its right to flow, to meander, to slow down, to swell and retreat.
They defend its right to connect, to participate, to be protected and to protect, to
repair and to heal.
Keep the Archive Alive
The river carries memory, stories, and futures. Guardians safeguard this living
archive of memory and possibility, so generations to come may weave their own
relations with it.
Becoming Kin
Being a guardian is being on a path of continual becoming. Guardians return
to the river, again and again. They walk with, accompany, develop kinship
with care and reciprocity.

3.3 Charter of the Guardians of the SZenne
We, the guardians of the SZenne,
do not represent the river.
We listen.
We spend time with it.
We slow down.
We witness and we remember.
We return again and again,
reviving our relation with the river.
Its language is not ours,
yet we strive to hear it:
in flow, in silence, in change.
What we share in human words
is not representation,
but a humble translation,
of what the river teaches us.
Let this Law be a living promise.