My life upon the river has not been long but it has been enough to teach me things about time and life. For the most part the peace is filled with the fragrance of flowers and trees, the sight of beavers busy building their lodges as the sun reflects from its surface. The peace has been wonderful occasionally disturbed by a noisy motor boat.
The mysterious thing about the river is the calm surface occasionally rippled by unseen forces beneath its surface. Of these mysterious disturbances there is one that I find hard to understand right now; this is the presence of a slow undulating wave sets the proceeds the approach of motor power boat. Everyone is familiar with a wake created by boats in motion on water but I have never read about the "pre-wake" that arrives before a boat passes. It's as if there is a way to tell that something is coming before your peaceful life is disturbed by the large wake followed by the passage of the noisy boat.
There are places in the river where the passing current has no effect to move my kayak. This is most mysterious event and if it had an analogy with a river as "time" it would mean that there could be places in the river where the passage of time has no effect on certain places or postures in the river. I could easily say that my time in Korea working with the children was such a moment in the river of life where time didn't seem to exist. It all had to do with keeping my attention focused on the Light in the lives of children. So the idea of immortality may have a connection with keeping your eyes on the Light and finding that your health, strength and joy remains in a timeless state. Though I experienced that for 11 years it was as if no time passed for me.
Now that I have left that beautiful peaceful river in the lives of children, I have rediscovered it again in a more literal sense as I paddle my kayak up against the currents of the peaceful river flowing out of the arctic tundra. There is a place where I can see the Light again and when that happens my kayak is no longer pushed down stream, meaning I can sit there in my kayak motionless without moving my paddle as long as I stay within the radiant rainbow fringed area of bright Light. It is truly Glorious.
Yes, Korea has some troubles but the wonderful thing is, I did live and flourish in the Light and lives of the children there. Life at this juncture has become very literal and simple. When I left Korea, a little 7 year old girl said to me, "Well, Goodbye Michael." For each of the last three day she saw me, she said the same thing as if it were the first goodbye she said. Hearing it from my perspective was a little eerie as I heard it three times, and coming from a child that kind of thought repeated with such finality did seem odd; it came across as if we were parting between the world of the living and dead. With the growing tensions in Korea I really didn't know where the finality existed. I do know that now that my life with children is gone, I can feel the passage of time as keenly as paddling against the great river current; it is tough, and exhausting. My last trip up the river left me so exhausted to that my heart was pounding too hard to get rest.
I long to return to the timeless peace of the River Light. I know where that place is and now that I live in a world of people who have lost their childhood innocence, I find my strength failing me. Seems my time is short and I must get back to the Light before the rapid passage of time in the current takes me where the waters are not safe.
Life is a gift in which we can share an ebb and flow of Love. When the channel for sharing Love is no longer opened, then like all things in nature, we are naturally drawn back to that peaceful place where the Light escapes back to its Source. It's all part of God's great plan. Everyone is given a chance to enter limited life and in so doing discover eternal life. Of so few ever receive this free and most wonderful gift before going back to our Home in the Light. If we have truly discovered true Love and Eternal life we will point others to that Door before we leave them behind.
Through my web page hobby I hope I have made this clear. I have made an effort to keep looking at the Light and I can't say that this web page isn't without errors. Though in the story before I tried to make clear the Korean conflict in words that sound less full of light than anything I have ever written; but in this story about the River I try and balance this out by saying that my 11 years in Korea lasted as long as it did simply because my life with children who were loved and returned love made my life a heaven on earth. |
