Flow
of Life
“We
looked into each other and realized that we all share the same river.
It flows beneath us and through us, from one dry heart to the next.
We share the same river. It makes the Earth one living thing.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening)
I
have always been in love with rivers. I think it may be because I was
born in a crack between mountains where two rivers converge, the
Hiwassee and the Valley. The Catawba river runs through the little
town where I grew up, and I went to college next to the Tuckaseegee.
Rivers are in my blood, and frequently in my dreams.
Rivers represent the continuous flow of life, whether through the
countryside, or through our veins as our very life-blood. Rivers
are significant symbols of the unconscious mind, with an easily
accessed surface, and down below, a deep under-current not visible to
the human eye.
In
California, after four years of severe drought, the rivers have dried
up. Each night on the evening news, we see parched river beds with
wild flowers springing through the cracks where luxury boats once
floated. That, too, is a significant symbol of the unconscious mind
of our country. What we took to be an endless resource, one that
could be lavishly enjoyed forever, actually has an end to it. Just
like the river in Mark Nepo's quote above, it will run through us
all, since California is the major supplier of our food.
There
is a rising awareness of the world as a global society. A niggling
disquiet about our earthbound interdependence is coming to the
surface of our collective consciousness. It's churned up from that
deep under-current we couldn't see before. We do, in fact, share the
same river, and the Earth has always been one living thing.
Our dry hearts must open to its flow. May it be so.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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