Return to the River of Belonging | Course of Musings

Return to the River of Belonging

O, Heraclitus, you wisest of philosophers: “Every little thing flows,” you say. “You’ll be able to’t step into the identical river twice,” you say. But we neglect, don’t we?

And now take a look at us.

Your river flows by way of the centuries, luring us towards a world of wondrous animacy — the intuitive understanding of our native ancestors and mystics and people who paint stars and intone sighs too deep for phrases.

However our consideration has shifted away to lifeless abstraction and blood-soaked absolutes. We neglect the music of the river, the way in which it sings to us of One thing Extra. We see solely the noun “river” as if it had been a static {photograph}, a re-presentation of a sensuous, flowing vibrancy.

The misplaced river: a deprivation of creativeness. We neglect what’s actual and true and wildly alive; we miss the silky move of life, the sheer longing and blessed incompleteness.

Our false selves — our dyed in-the-wool selves — grasp on 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 through which to slice up the whole lot into sterile classes:

Both/or

Us/them

Nature/humanity

God/world

However that’s not the river, solely impoverished items of the river, abstracted from the move: a examine in “misplaced concreteness.” If solely we may toss all our severed concepts again into the river of wholeness, we might witness the miracle of inventive transformation. As a substitute, we grasp on to them for expensive life, not realizing that life is within the move, not within the items.

Maybe we’re afraid. In spite of everything, the move is filled with hazard and security, magnificence and terror: a examine in “ands”—

rocks and water,

solidness and alter,

sameness and distinction,

religion and doubt,

transferring collectively in dialectical rigidity, reaching for the broader sea of transformation.

We had been born in water. We started our life within the move, solely to be educated out of it. If solely we are able to return to the river inside us, round us, past us. Then,

the whole lot blossoms,

the whole lot widens out,

the whole lot belongs —

The long run is open.

Even now, after a lot loss, we are able to nonetheless — I hope — return to the river like wild geese squawking out their aliveness, descending with objective and pleasure to the luminous waters of house.

Heraclitus whispers (and generally shouts) from eons previous: Return to the cosmic move of spaciousness, depth, awe! And above all, to a way of reverence for each other. And the sky. And the tiny goslings, furry and feathered, watched over tenderly by their elders.

There’s a river of belonging on the opposite aspect of our consideration, so large and welcoming that it will possibly maintain the whole lot laborious and tender. River rocks, twigs, and even fallen timber create eddies and whirlpools of inventive chance: Unfathomable thriller chock-full of divinity.

Might we keep in mind who we’re: not remoted observers on a barren shore, however richly blessed contributors throughout the inventive move, immersed within the deep tenderness of the sacred, through which “we reside and transfer and have our being.”

***

Apply: What brings you into the move of actuality? Music, artwork, tales, poetry, prayer, meditation? While you grow to be overwhelmed by the fragmented, reductionistic, both/or world that’s transferring us in a harmful route, sit down on the piano, transfer into contemplative prayer or meditation, take a stroll with a buddy, or write a poem. Possibly then we are able to study to pay attention deeply to somebody who has opposing views. Once we see the true nature of actuality on this means, our consideration is drawn towards inventive potentialities that may rebirth hope for our planet and for our lives.

Subsequent Publish: Miss Harbottle’s Massive Mistake (And Why it Issues to Us)