Stream

During my contemplative medication this morning (Yes, it was medicinal.), I saw myself walking onto a foot bridge that runs across the creek at Camp NaCoMe. When I was half-way across, I stopped to think about which direction I would face: upstream or downstream. Which would you choose?

My initial thought was upstream, but then I thought better. I looked downstream, as I watched my life being gently carried down by the flowing water. I saw my parents and my brother, all physically present in my past, now carried toward the sea of oneness. I watched my past flow – choices I’d made, things that had happened to me, the person I had become – as all of that, too, was carried away. “Let it go.” the water whispered as it swirled around rocks and logs.

After all that I could remember had been carried away by the water’s flow, I stepped across the bridge and turned to look upstream, as if I could see what was coming. The water was flowing, the rocks and tree branches, and grooves of the creek bed were helping the water sing its pianissimo anthem, but there was no discernible evidence of me upstream; no foreshadowing of what’s to come.

Then, I looked down and saw my feet on the bridge. They were connected to my legs, my torso, my arms, my head. I was there, on the bridge, and really nowhere else. Through the faint whisper of creek-song I heard a refrain, “You are here. You are still. You are still here. Be here. Be still. Be.”

Carry on, not downstream or upstream, but right there on your own bridge. The creek will sing you into today, and that will be enough.

© 2015 Todd Jenkins