Aligning with Grace

"You never step into the same river twice." ~ Heraclitus Nothing is ever the same. Everything changes. This river, that I have visited - at times nearly every day - over the space of a decade, is not the same. But then neither am I. I came to this river, suggested as a meeting place by a friend during a time of neediness and great pain and impending transitions. I came back, many a morning, feeling alone, having hit rock bottom, in the throws of deep depression, to do a rosary of spiritual practices: Lovingkindness meditations, Reiki chants, actual rosaries, prayers both traditional and spontaneous, the offering of blessings, and whatever else arose from the depths of my soul. For several years I came, almost daily. One morning, while sitting on a boulder by the riverbank, the river beckoned me to come inside. And so I did. I bought a kayak without even thinking about it, and spent a few years paddling upstream - repeating mantras, reciting prayers, while receiving...

Some messages come to us more than once in a season... And for this, there is always a reason... I read this quote by Heraclitus, that has come to me over and over again, each time revealing another layer of meaning: "You can never step into the same river twice." And then, I stumble across this clarification in the wonderful book, Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression , by James S. Gordon, MD: "We cannot step into the same river once; by the time the second foot falls, we're already entering a different river. This river of continual change is our life." And as the author of this insight work notes, "there are times when we resist the pull of the river..." I read on, and find much that speaks to me, that I will share later, but for the second time in a month, the same passage from the Tao Te Ching comes to me, and I realize the quote from Heraclitus, and this passage, come bearing insights and gems of wisdom. Perhaps there a...