The River Calls

On this overcast day, cool and crisp, and reminiscent of the coming fall season, I am drawn to the river once again, with my coffee cup in hand, as I started almost every day, for the course of a year and and a half - three years ago in December...

The river calls, and I return again...

I came to this river to meditate almost daily, at a time during so many transitions and unanswered questions. I return once more, at a similar time once again, wondering what the future holds, and what will for me, in time unfold...

It is hard to see, and harder still to know - what will come and what will be...But one more time, the river calls, and it still flows...

I return again, not sure what to answer - or even ask...

But this is a different river. They say you never step into the same river twice...My heart longs to get into the water to paddle, but I have deadlines to meet, and preparation for teaching and subbing for others this week...So I pause for just a moment, to offer these words...

I walk along the riverbank - and the shoreline is different from what I remembered it to be. The rocks that I sat and meditated on, nearly a footprint from the water, are buried under huge trunks of trees, carried downstream during the heavy rains and floods of this past spring...

I wander up the well worn and beaten dirt path along the cliff where the waters topped off during the peak of all the flooding, barely a few months ago, and I find new benches have been installed, on a newly constructed cobblestone patio. The view here is different, but it still brings to mind the many solitary mornings spent in the depths of winter, where I sat and shivered through Lovingkindness practices and meditations. Nothing ever remains the same, and yet, I still pine for a past I cannot embrace, and should no longer cling to, for it keeps my soul tethered to limbo. I yearn for love and a state of being that can only be sustained briefly, in this dimension...

Yes, the river calls, and I hear myself softly sing these words written by Mary Chapin Carpenter...

"I found myself between two places neither of them home
I could not recognize the faces
I've never felt so alone

I found myself between two choices - to settle or to run
All my life I've heard the voices
This time mine's the only one...

I wanna feel what the wind feels like
I wanna go that high and feel no fear
except being down here,
Holding up the sky...holding up the sky

Life astounds us in an instant
Changing all we know
Blink just once and then you've missed it
All you can do is watch it go...

I found myself between two lifetimes
The sunset and the dawn
I reached out and took the life-line offered up to me
between here and gone...

I wanna feel what the wind feels like...
and feel no fear except being down here
Holding up the sky..."

And so, it was, and so it is once more, in a never-ending cycle that returns again...