Rivers

I had dinner with a friend the other night – and we were taking a trip back in time, remembering ‘the good ole’ days’ back in our misspent young adulthood.  He and his band mates practiced in our basement – and Glenn and I would always be there at their various gigs – regardless of how seedy the venue! And on the way home, I was thinking (that’s scary!) about this whole ‘life is a journey’ idea.  And I came to the conclusion that this cliché – and it is an overdone one – needs a refresher.

And so I was thinking…

I’m thinking it is more like a river.  Glenn loved rivers – even just sitting on the banks watching the water flow  southward – and whatever was floating on it… On the Hennepin Canal, quietly paddling in our canoe, on the Rock River it would be geese, pelicans, ducks, a jumping fish now and again.  On the Mississippi – the tangle of barges and tugs making their way to a port somewhere far away…  ( Ok, cue in Samuel Clemens about now…)

And so I was thinking…

A journey often means traveling to a destination – a planned trip and one with a known end. And life can be like that – our ‘end’ is always death. But life is more than just an ending. Rivers generally don’t just end- they usually flow into yet another body of water. And so they continue on, albeit in another form.

Rivers flow thru valleys, under cliffs, over cliffs dropping inches or hundreds of feet. Water crashing as it goes.  If you have ever seen Niagara Falls or Victoria Falls in Africa – you know the majesty of water falls…and the danger...

Rivers often out run their banks… flowing sometimes endlessly where they shouldn’t be, indiscriminate, with a voracious hunger devouring everything in it path.

Rivers can be soothing – a great place to swim if the current isn’t too strong – and yet they can be dangerous – flooding out homes and leaving dead and injured behind.

And so I was thinking…

Isn’t life kinda like that?  Our Christian/Lutheran faith teaches us that while the body may die, it will be resurrected and there will be eternal life. But however you make sense of that, when we die our form changes.  The body changes – we become spirit, maybe? Whatever happens, we are no longer the same. But we do continue to live on in the memories of those still alive – maybe in a legacy of some sort – and, as I’ve been told, as long as someone remembers, that person lives on.  And I believe that. I have to.

In this life we too flow through the valleys and under cliffs.  The low spots – those valleys of death where we sometimes crash and burn and then there are the mountain top experiences that revive our souls. Or maybe just an uplifting prayer spoken on our behalf………..

And then there are the times we out run our banks, take on more than we can handle, say yes to often, no, not enough. We stretch ourselves thin – often through our own doing but often not.  Like when the death of a loved one,  life partner, a spouse, a best friend, smacks you in the face – draws you out of your ‘banks,’ out of your limits of endurance, out of yourself and into another place.

And like any great flood, it takes time to retreat and retract back into place.

And, just like that river that oversteps its bounds, in life, that place is not the same as before. Maybe good, maybe bad, maybe ragged around the edges; different nonetheless.

And there are times when life is soothing – when all is well with my soul – when the sun is always shining and it only rains gently at night…when the ravages of life are far away and love reigns.

But life is dangerous, too. Despair and grief and sorrow, anger and longing; emotions roiling like that #7 rapids that is almost impossible to navigate. Life is dangerous. As Annie Dillard one wrote, we should all be wearing crash helmets.

And unlike that river that doesn’t just end, life does. Our physical life anyway. So maybe it is a journey after all… one that we all take, no one is exempt, we all are traveling to that known end. All life ends in death. But life is more than just an ending - more than the death that is inevitable. The rivers of our lives flow on endlessly.... I believe that. I have to.