The river that carries

#62: A short meditation

We’d do well to pay mind to the many currents of life’s miscellanea that have carried us to our personal present day — the combination of people and places and time, the million little interactions that form our bodies and the environments they fill.

We are not products of ourselves, and that alone is worth noticing if only to reduce our degree of collective shame. The conquering mindset we’ve adopted reduces us to self-critical do-better machines, void of much self-compassion. It could be that in noticing the river we rode, a wider noticing occurs.

Of all the things we’ve chosen for ourselves, I propose that much more has been decided for us. The culture chooses on our behalf — a benevolent sort of violence imposed on very souls.

Today I will take the time to show compassion to my past, present, and future.

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“To preserve and honor the essence of something is to be soulful.”

— Richard Rohr