Something Wonderful

At some point in our lives we began to pour concrete [within our hearts]. It was made of anxiety, fear, and stress. Our task is to bring down the walls of our own inner dams [made of this concrete]. We can learn to dismantle them. And we can begin by asking ourselves what kind of lives we want. Do we want to micro-manage every moment, or do we want to dismantle our control and trust the great river to carry us forward?

An untamed river, after all, is alive. It erodes banks and bursts them; it seeks new courses. It floods, and is astonishingly powerful. Dammed water is monumentally static: trapped, regulated, stagnant. Do we want to live in faith or do we want to be held back by fear?

When I'm in the flow – writing, hiking, making love – I know these are the most ecstatic times of my life. These are the times of my great self-forgetting, when the ego drops away and my anxiety with it. I become a channel for something wonderful to flow through me . . . creativity, celebration, love.

In these moments the breath of spirit reminds me to let go and ride the wild river into the heart of my life.

– Mary Reynolds Thompson
Excerpted from Reclaiming the Wild Soul:
How Earth's Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness
White Cloud Press, 2014
pp. 67-68

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Light Within
• What Part of Jesus' Invitation to "Be Not Afraid" Don't the Bishops Get?
• Nakhane's Hymn to Freedom
• In Summer Light
• I Caught a Glimpse of a God . . .
• The Prayer Tree
• Minnehaha Awash
• Everything Will Flow
• Love is My Guide
• Time and the River
• Real Holiness

Image: Michael J. Bayly.