For many years, I have loved a river. I drink in its greens and blues and grays and the wind playing on its waters. I watch it ebb and flow. Sometimes I go into the river. I swim reverently, slowly, wondering. I am only on its surface with the ducks and the gulls. Sometimes a fish jumps, and I laugh.
I will never know this river. This river is not mine. I do not carry the burden of understanding it or owning it or capturing it. I will never say, “This is the river,” because every minute the river changes. Always a river flows. It changes. It unfolds. It surprises. No, I do not know this river. And yet I know that somehow we are like this river.
“I would love to live / like a river flows / carried by the surprise / of its own unfolding.” John O’Donohue
“[O]ur lives [are] gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters . . . and we become like Him.” 2 Corinthians 3:18, The Message