Water Flows Through Hard Places

Water flows through hard places

and pools in spaces vast and small.

It sings to itself all day

and has no ego, no plan, no

fear of a fall.

Listening, our bodies sing back

and breathe like tides.

The ego wants to hammer out

a statue that will last forever,

while water shapes stones

into rounder and rounder ways

that charm us into rounding too.

Will we become art as well?

What rivers will we become?

What pools, what tides,

what oceans?

Look within,

and see.

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Who are we? Our personalities? Our minds? Our habits and upbringing? Or are we our spiritual essence and light? What does it mean to be like water - do we flow freely or become dammed by stifling human ideas? Are we like gently falling rain into a world that is thirsty for love, beauty, and wisdom? Or are parts of us frozen or turned to steam? I think that remembering the image of a mountain creek can renew our inner freshness and sense of freedom.

This photo is of a creek in the Willamette National Forest, high in the Cascades east of Eugene, Oregon. Its water is crystalline clear, swirling downhill toward the Willamette river and eventually the Pacific Ocean. And then, who knows? Will it swirl around the world on ocean currents? Rise again through evaporation and be blown eastward back to the Cascades? And our own flowing ideas and heartfelt care - what beauty and nourishment do we receive from our loved ones, and then share with those around us? Let's find out.