Return to the River of Belonging
O Heraclitus, you’re the wisest of philosophers: “All the pieces flows,” you say. “You may by no means step in the identical river twice,” you say. But we neglect, do not we?
And now have a look at us.
Your river flows by way of the centuries, luring us right into a wondrous world of animacy — the intuitive data of our earliest ancestors and mystics who sigh too deep for photos and phrases.
However our consideration has shifted to lifeless abstractions and blood-soaked absolutes. We neglect the music of the river, the way in which it sings one thing extra to us. We see solely the noun “river” as if it had been a nonetheless {photograph}, a re-presentation of a sensuous, flowing vitality.
Misplaced Rivers: Deprivation of the Creativeness. We neglect what’s actual and true and wildly alive; We miss life’s silky circulation, sheer need, and blessed imperfection.
Our false selves – our dyed-in-the-wool selves – cling to issues with our tunnel imaginative and prescient and defenses: a determined want for management. So right here we’re, day after day, sharpening our knives of precision to categorize every part sterile:
this or that
ours their
Nature/Humanity
God/World
However that is not a river, only a poor piece of river, abstracted from circulation: a research of “misplaced concreteness”. If we might return all our fragmented concepts to the river of wholeness, we might witness a miracle of inventive transformation. As a substitute, we grasp on to them for expensive life, not realizing that life is in flux, not in items.
Perhaps we’re afraid. In spite of everything, the circulation is stuffed with hazard and safety, magnificence and terror: a research in “Ends.”
stone and water,
stability and alter,
similarities and variations,
religion and doubt,
Transferring ahead collectively in dialectical pressure, reaching the huge ocean of transformation.
We’re born in water. We start our lives within the stream, solely to be educated from it. If solely we might return to the river inside us, round us, past us. then,
every part swells,
All the pieces expands,
All the pieces belongs to –
The long run is open.
But, after a lot loss, we are able to nonetheless — I hope — return to the river like wild deer with their vitality, goal, and pleasure descending into the lighted waters of dwelling.
From the previous Heraclitus whispers (and typically shouts): Again to the cosmic circulation of breadth, depth, surprise! And above all, respect for one another. And the sky And the little goslings, fluffy and feathery, are tenderly watched over by their elders.
On the opposite facet of our consideration is a river of belonging, so extensive and welcoming that it will probably maintain every part arduous and mushy. River rocks, branches, even fallen bushes create eddies and eddies of inventive potential: unfathomable mysteries filled with divinity.
Might we keep in mind who we’re: not remoted observers on a barren shore, however abundantly blessed members within the inventive circulation, immersed within the deep tenderness of the Holy, the place “we reside and transfer and have our being.”
***
to observe: What brings you into the circulation of actuality? Music, artwork, tales, poetry, prayer, meditation? Once you really feel fragmented, reductionist, both/or overwhelmed by the damaging approach the world is main us, sit down on the piano, interact in contemplative prayer or meditation, take a stroll with a buddy, or write a poem. Perhaps then we are able to study to pay attention deeply to somebody with an opposing view. Once we see the true nature of actuality on this approach, our consideration is drawn to the inventive prospects that may hope for rebirth for our planet and our lives.
Subsequent submit: Miss Herbottle’s Huge Mistake (and Why It Issues to Us)
