Just a heads up to those of you who’ve been joining the Lenten study on Climate+Faith this season: we’ll skip Thursday of Holy Week and have our final gathering on Thursday, April 4. See you then.
I live on the river, now; on the river in the middle of the city in the mountains. It’s gorgeous. Like, fills-up-my-blue-ridge-mountain-heart kind of beautiful. And the river is full, too, every day. People are out there fishing at dawn. The geese are around by breakfast. There’s a greenway on the riverbank, so walkers and runners and dog-walkers and baby strollers are constantly passing by. I just learned this morning that the park next door is part of the Virginia Bird & Wildlife Trail, filled with cardinals, robins, sparrows, tufted titmice and, come summer, yellow-throated warblers and indigo buntings. The “charismatic” and endangered Roanoke logperch is, apparently, darting through the waters in ever-increasing numbers.
My neighborhood is *busy,* thanks to the river. I love it.
I grew up out in Roanoke County, and even though I’ve lived in several cities across the country since then, THIS city feels distinctly different. A river runs through it. The mountains literally surround it. I’m still getting to know this place, but it feels right-sized; a city that happily accommodates fishing and hiking and kayaking and endangered logperch right here within its borders.
The idea of “life on the river” gins up images like Mark Twain’s lonely steamboat or a vacation house built for retreat and leisure and solitude. But here, in the middle of the city, “life on the river” is just…life.
Last week, Chris LaTray titled one of his sub stack posts with a John O’Donohue poem called “Fluent,” and I caught it and tucked it into my heart as an epigraph for this season of my life:
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
Nothing about the shape of my life these days is expected. I am surprised by almost every bit of it. There’s a way to experience this kind of unexpectedness that causes people to curl inward, shrivel, harden. I’ve watched people do it, in real time. I do not want that. I want to choose otherwise. I want to be carried by the surprise of my own unfolding, to live like a river flows.
I have watched people do that, too. I have seen people stretch out, open their arms and welcome the unknown even when it hurts, even when it absolutely SUCKS. I have seen the ways that this kind of courage and grace acts like a magnet, shimmering humility attracting all manner of goodness. Like the river outside my window, whose constant, contented flow draws all manner of creatures to its currents.
I don’t know where this particular stream of life is carrying me, today. But I would love to live like the river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
I watched that 10 second video of the river flowing and it was exactly what I need on a day when I feel like I'm running headlong into rapids. THANK YOU!
Love this perspective! ❤️ And speaking of Mark Twain, I just heard about this new release and can't wait to get my hands on it! https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/173754979