If I were a River:

Then I’m sure I would identify with the river banks through which I flowed, would feel more powerful when swollen with the spring run-off , and I would narrate many stories about the droughts and floods I had witnessed.  I might even view as “my world” the cattle drinking at the edge of “my banks”.  But I would merely be the life (and possibly the awareness) that flows in this river.  There is a Sufi story which is written from the point of view of a stream, and which touches on many of the issues raised in this week’s reading, such as: who are we?  A stream which has it source in far off mountains reaches the edge of a desert.  There, since it has overcome every other obstacle in it path, it is determined to cross the sands.  But a whisper from the winds, at first not heard, then–perhaps because this has all happened before–catches the attention of this stream: “You cannot cross the desert in this way; at most, and this would take years, you can become a swamp; but if you relax into the arms of the wind you can cross the desert and fall as rain on the other side of the desert.  We know this to be true, because we see it every day”.  Ah, if we could only relax our insistence on remaining the river we think we are, could we enter a greater world?–Michael