Last I wrote you here we pondered our wildernesses together, our woods and shadowed places. Let’s venture into our waters now. I want to write to you of your streams and rivers, your seas. What a world you are, what glory.

In ancient medicinal ways the energetic pathways that run from the crowns of our heads to the soles of our feet are as living streams of water flowing to and from our organs—our seas. The steady course, the purity, the unhindered-ness of it being the blessings, or the lack of their freedom being the curses, upon our precious organs—sustainability, life.

There’s a Native American proverb that teaches how we can never enter the same river twice. It’s true—not the rivers that run through the forest ravines or down the mountain crevices nor the rivers within us—the same as they are now, can’t be entered twice. We have now though. What will we do with it, here, presently, in the rivers that run through us?

Is it not strange to us yet how we miss it though? But more than that, how often we’ll refuse to see our own refusal, believing not this coursing of life pulsating through our entire being but rather being fully captivated by a few well placed seeds between our ears, sprouting in our minds, high and lifted up like romantic snowy peaks.

In Scriptural language the poetry calls these places within all of us like Lebanon, the white mountain of Syria, and the peaks of Amana and Senir and Herman. These places of transformation and grandeur, needed beauty, and heights and breath-giving wonder call to us and we. must. go! We must go in order to see and rapture and then to hear the quieter voice still, the One Who knowing and gifting us these gorgeous bodies, these homes, we inhabit all our days, knows us by name.

This voice speaks, “Come away with me”. Come away from the lofty and celebrated mountain ranges, the perennial constant peaks. Come to the deep dark mysterious waters. There are hiding places in the mountains, there are times to discern whether they give rest or are lair to lions and leopards. Yet, ultimately, in our journey to our own ground, they are the head of the waters and a path we’re meant to find down down down.

The poetry of nations long spent would call to us through the centuries, call to our bodies and our minds and our spirits, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, look and see how beautiful.”

We become so captivated and safe in our minds, yet we are told we are captivated with, by, one glance of our eye. And that’s the thing about the river. Oh, it changes, but once within, even for a moment, a glance, we’ll never not know again how love is better than wine. In other words, we’ll go behind the scenes of supposed humility, and find there a humbling, a lowering that is proved true by one thing—the way it lifts us high!

Humility will let our rivers flow, our streams be free, our seas to flourish. Never let anyone ever tell us different, not even ourself. Breathing it in today, with you.

“True humility involves not thinking less of yourself but rather that your focus is less on your Self.” -Keren Hannah Pryor

And a poem for you:

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness that carries all you need.
May you see what is hidden in you as a place
of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may what is hidden in you become your gift
to give, may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word
of the light, may you join all of your previous
disappearances with this new appearance,
this new morning, this being seen again,
new and newly alive. -David Whyte

Love,

Raynna

P.S. please share with anyone else you know who could use to breath it in today too.


hellooo! I’m Raynna, a writing, photograph-taking, qigong-practicing, homeschooling-mama-of-six exploring the wilds of the Pacific Northwest and me.  I write because I know I’m not the only one and because I know we need each other. Subscribe to receive updates directly in your inbox. Stay as long as you’d like, feel welcome to move on when you need. I’m glad you are here, today.