Prayers vs. Demands

Longing for change without grasping for "success."

Disclaimer: This is my first year participating in the Run4Salmon, and I was only there for one-day. A far cry from the 10-years of hard work and dedication poured into this project by Indigenous leaders and their allies. I want to lift up the work of Chief Caleen and the entire Winnemem Wintu Tribe for their vision and leadership, people like Niria Garcia as well as Corrina and Deja Gould, Vic Montaño and the entire team at Sogorea Te Land Trust for all of their work. Even though it was only one-day, I am so grateful to them and so many more for giving me an opportunity to be in service and to learn from their ways.

Image from www.winnememwintu.us

The other day, I got to spend the day walking with the Run4Salmon, an annual prayer-walk led by the Winnemem Wintu Tribe that follows the historic pathways of the salmon whose ancestral home lies in the watershed near Mount Shasta.

I grew up participating in long prayer walks and pilgrimages—most formatively the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage, a six-month journey retracing the transatlantic slave route, which was my introduction to activist work in 1998. But it’s been a long time since I’ve joined anything longer than a one-day march.

From the moment this walk began, I could feel its power. Even though I was only able to join for the first day of this 300-mile journey, I was deeply grateful to be part of it. There’s something extraordinary that happens when a large group walks with shared purpose—laying down prayers together for a common cause. It creates a field of energy that’s hard to describe. We leave behind our daily distractions, and instead spend 24 hours a day in community with fellow walkers. These are the conditions where lifelong relationships form—and I was quickly reminded how much I miss these kinds of experiences.

During the opening circle, the leaders reminded us: This is a prayer. Not a political march. Not an intellectual exercise. Every step we take is a living, embodied prayer.

This is the same teaching I received from the Nipponzan Myohoji monastics—the Buddhist order that initiated the Middle Passage pilgrimage and with whom I’ve walked thousands of miles. For them, every step, every drumbeat, every chant is a prayer made with your whole body.

It’s a radically different orientation than what I’ve known in most of the “political” spaces I grew up in—activist circles, social movements, nonprofit organizations.

Much of my life over the past decade has been about unlearning. One thing I’m still unlearning is the idea that we can force our will. In the activist world, I was trained to believe that every campaign, every march, every protest needed to push for a specific outcome or demand—new legislation, a policy change or the removal of some official.

And it’s not like prayer marches like the Run4Salmon doesn’t have concrete goals. Thanks to this Run, Chief Caleen now sits at the table where decisions are made and the Winnemem have been able to lead a process of bringing the salmon back.

But there is a profound difference between walking in prayer for the salmon to return—and walking in demand that a piece of legislation pass.

Prayer opens us to mystery. It humbles us. It reminds us that so much is beyond our control, beyond our comprehension. Prayer acknowledges that there are forces far greater than us that will ultimately shape what happens next.

Letting go of control—accepting the unknown, and releasing the compulsion to force outcomes—has been one of my greatest un-learnings. I used to believe that if we just thought hard enough, planned well enough, pulled the right levers, we would get the results we wanted.

But when we move from a place of sacredness, we remember: the transformations needed in this moment of history—the ones that can reorient our species toward life, beauty, and community—are far bigger than what our intellect can grasp.

Forcing demands onto our supposed opponents not only assumes a false separation between “us” and “them,” but also assumes we know the full map to liberation.

Since the construction of the Shasta Dam in 1945, salmon have not been able to return to their ancestral spawning grounds. The construction of the dam flooded over 90% of the Winnemem’s cultural, spiritual, village, and burial sites along the Sacramento, McCloud, and Pit Rivers. To think that we can fully repair this complex ecosystem with human logic alone feels almost arrogant.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t have goals. Of course we want the salmon to return.

But a demand is rigid. It cannot hear “no.” It carries a grasping energy, and if unmet, it leaves us defeated. It sets up a binary—success or failure.

A prayer is different. It expresses deep longing, but it’s held with equanimity. We release control. We know that once the prayer is offered, it moves on its own timeline. It doesn’t care about our campaign strategy, strategic timeline or metrics of success. And because of that, we can let it go without clinging.

We’ve tried to drive change through intellect alone for a long time. And our minds do have a role. But I sense it’s time to move forward with our minds and hearts in alignment—knowing that the transformation we seek won’t come from the blueprints of intellect alone.

In fact, when we begin to believe we’ve got it all figured out—that may be the clearest sign it’s time to stop and listen again.

As I continue exploring the path of fierce vulnerability and what our action can look like, I am reminded again—by these Indigenous leaders—that it is prayer, full-bodied and public, that must lead the way.

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