Entrust Yourself to the River

White Water Life

“People who have faith in life are like swimmers who entrust themselves to a rushing river. They neither abandon themselves to its current nor try to resist it. Rather, they adjust their every movement to the watercourse, use it with purpose and skill, and enjoy the adventure.”

David Steindl-Rast (Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles' Creed, p.135)

I had an interesting dream a few years ago in which I was standing on the loading dock of my “father's business.” This loading dock was not above a parking lot, but rather, above a wide river. As I watched, a very strange vehicle came down the river—part barge, part pick-up truck and part wagon. I was intrigued, and wanted to get a closer look, so I dived off the platform and swam out to the “boat.” Some of my father's male employees began shouting at me in a frantic way from the loading dock—“Get out of the water! The river is dangerous! You'll drown!” I swam back to them, climbed the ladder to the platform, and then reamed them out. “I've been swimming in this river all my life!" I screamed, "Don't you dare command me to get out of it ever again!”

Haven't we all been swimming in this river our whole lives. Some of us fight the current, some of us panic on a regular basis and flail around in it, which gets us nowhere. Some of us even try to overwhelm the river, bend it to our will, and make it flow the way we want. Unless you're the Army Corp of Engineers, that rarely works. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, where the rivers are freezing cold, and filled with rocks and white water. Like the lives of the people around them, those rivers are often chaotic and dangerous. But if you drive through the gorges on any given day, especially in spring and summer, you will see busloads of people in life jackets and helmets, maneuvering down the river on rafts and in kayaks. There is something exciting and inviting about getting into a rushing river. They are full of life, and that liveliness is contagious.

Learning to trust life, its flow, its tendency to ebb at times, rush at times, is truly a gift. Life is like a river in that it is forward moving, hard to force into submission, and can be viewed as a danger or an adventure. When we learn to trust that we are safe in this river of life, that we can go with its flow and not be drowned by it, we are well and truly in for an exciting experience. There will be some rocks and some fast water, we'll drop down falls and run into dry spots when we have to carry the boat instead of the boat carrying us. We can face this with gratitude, or fear. Believe me, I've done both, and I can tell you that gratitude is better. The life-river will carry you to places you've never imagined if you let it. You are in the middle of it, anyway; so you may as well enjoy the ride.

                                                 In the Spirit,

                                                     Jane