Sunday Meditation #9: River Run Free

Fair amount of walking this week.  White gold sunlight, crisp November air meant temptation to be outside in the creation instead of flinging myself at the walls that bind me in grayness.  It was breath, it was life, down by the tea-colored river.  A few hours of grace in which I offered up my thanks.

Ruminations while I walk.  The pub table in my head seats two figments who question in a slow-motion call and response.  I talk to myself, my skull an amphitheater.  Most of the time not spent taking photographs (in itself another form of questioning) I devote to the state of my union.  Unemployment having weighed down my thoughts, I cast them off to truly assess the current state of affairs.  It is good, sometimes, to do this.  Since I do not attend church (although I haven't forgotten about it) I walk in the chapel of nature, with trees as roof.  The rocks, leaves and water a floor fit for any soul.

The river is inescapable.  It knows what is in my heart, sussed out by silent conversations between my heart and the water over sand and stone.  On my walk, an observation: the dam is gone.  Gone.  How did I not see this on previous walks?  A whole dam, disappeared.  The concrete scar on the river demolished and taken away, leaving unsettled stone and new sand banks in its place.  Trees have been planted, young trunks upheld by plastic tubes the color of dirty milk.  On the north bank, a crumbling concrete sluice lies filled with soil.  The rusting cogs and beams on top stand in mute testimony to the new violence perpetrated on a river that simply wants to be left alone to pursue its course.

I stand under a sky filled with oyster light, on the railroad tracks above the river.  I watch the water fulfill its aqueous nature.  A broad smile blooms on my bewhiskered face as the river flows into my heart.  I know now.  I know.  The river is joyful because it is freer now, flowing where it is supposed to flow.

As does the love in my heart.  There was a dam, inside, a Gordian knot of fears, anxieties, insecurity and timidity.  But somewhere back there, in the fullness of this very trying year the dam cracked.  It broke.  The pent-up waters of love burst forth from the reservoir of my sore heart and began to race down the valley of my soul.  It feels good, this enlightenment.  It feels good.

I know why the river sings of joy.  There is no path so satisfying as that which one is meant to follow, and the river, in its contentedness, knows this.  Now, so do I.  I feel the path that sings to me of home, and I follow.  I follow love.