A Vessel of Grace

After early Sunday morning meditations I head down to the garage to dedicate my new kayak...

She is beautiful - all 39 pounds of her - a mosaic of light and darker blues...

I anoint her with holy water from another river - the sacred Ganges and from the grotto of Lourdes - just like the sacred space I anointed last week...

I touch her gently with fragrant holy oil and christen her with spikenard - the rare oil that the scriptures say Mary Magdalen used when she anointed the feet of Jesus.

I call upon God, a sacred lineage of gurus, Kwan Yin, and Mother Mary, and dedicate my sacred vessel and name her "Grace," the name Ann Linnea gave to her own vessel, and a word that has been central to my path and my experience...

Let her be strong... Let her take me places I have not been to yet in my spiritual journey... Let her open doors for me that I have not yet been able to access... Let her enable me to surrender more fully to the river...

I journey from having been an observant spectator at the river, to having become a more active participant - and to finally merging and becoming one with the river - satisfying my thirst for wholeness...

I will surrender to the river, and in so doing, I will surrender more deeply to God...

And the words, excerpted from this beautiful poem from the book Strands of Eternity by Vasant Lad, waft into my soul:

Surrender

...What does it mean to surrender to God...?

Surrendering to God means surrendering
to your awareness, your consciousness,
your experience at this very moment...

Surrender can't be practiced.
It happens now or never.
When you surrender to every moment,
your life becomes a celebration.
Celebrate each feeling, each thought, every emotion
and your life will flow like a river.
The river is born deep within the mountain.
It flows through the jungles and valleys,
through cities and villages
and ultimately the river merges with the ocean.

Surrender is the river that will deliver you back
to the ocean of cosmic consciousness.