Healing Waters
Sitting on my balcony at Riversleigh, watching its namesake course beneath me……
Healing Waters:
Where I live, there are no great rivers, no meandering behemoths, lush with green banks and teaming with fish; no rivers sacred like the Nile, no rivers pulsing with eternal life according to Revelation, no River Styx marking the boundaries between life and death.
Where I live, the river beds are dry and trash-strewn, their concrete walls tagged with grafitti art and choked with weeds bursting through the cracks in the cement,
except……
when winter rainstorms sweep from the north, then the channels rage with torrents of boiling, gray swill, drawing the flood waters from the streets, and pouring the city’s filth into the bay.
On these days, I am reminded of the human condition: we turn dry and choked with all manner of negative thoughts and bad behavior until the storms of life churn us up, clean us out and bring healing to our souls.
So the next time I drive the freeway over an uninspiring river bed, I look to the horizon for storm clouds and wait for the healing waters.
Text and image: L. Gloyd © April 17, 2006
posted by The Gate Keeper @ 5:06 PM
3 comments
The 
3 Comments:
For some reason I immediately thought of Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Women Who Run With the Wolves. She talks about the healing dredging and renewal.
So did I. Clearing the creative waters. Seems there is reason to do this on a world scale. They are revegetating a lot of river areas now, which immediately brings the proper creatures and order back to it, even amongst suburbs. It's like a miracle really, this regeneration being possible. It's a great metaphor too.
Yes, I was investigating the use of the river as a metaphor for something other than boundaries and sources of life. This started out as an essay, went to a poem, then back to a sort of lyrical narrative.
Post a Comment
<< Home