Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether
what I have done is my life.  Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait.  We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
~William Stafford

It is not lost on me that I have the privilege, the deep and awesome privilege of living near the Mississippi River. Every day, sometimes many times a day, I cross its waters and once again marvel that this is truth in my life. I look out over the skyline of St. Paul and wonder at the many events and experiences this river has witnessed. I have stood by its flowing at all seasons and seen any manner of things being dragged in the current as it makes its way to the ocean. In these summer months, it is a joy to watch the various kinds of boats that make their way up and down…small kayaks, motorboats, large cabin cruisers and canoes. Most for pleasure but some for the important work of carrying cargo to various ports along the way. This mythic river feeds our country in unseen ways.

Over the years I have learned much from the river. It has calmed me. It has received my tears. It has inspired me. It has been a source of awe and perhaps even fear as I stare at its force from the top of one of the bridges it flows under and I stand above. There is strength and a constancy about the river that cannot be rivaled. It is flowing…going somewhere…at its own, sweet pace. Of course there are times when it carries ice from the north, large chunks that started someplace else and got taken along for the ride. The same is true for the small and large limbs and trunks from trees dislodged from another shore. All of this grounds me in some primal way. And when the winers are severe and the waters rise, it can be a source of destruction and devastation. You can learn much from observing a river. 

Yet, it is not just the river itself that is a teacher. Often I am blessed to watch the barges lined along the rivers’ edge. I wonder at what they hold. And then along comes the lowly tugboat to push them on their way. Just last week I watched as the small, white boat made its way upstream and came to rest behind the long, flat, inelegant metal barges. I don’t know what the barges carried…sand, rock, grain perhaps. All I know is that the tiny, toy-like boat gave the huge barges a shove and there they went. Down the river! Watching the graceful way the tugboat propelled the barges into motion, I thought of all the ways we humans often feel unable to move, held captive by mistakes we think we’ve made and countless other things. We are stuck on the shore like a waiting barge, carrying a load that seems impossible to dislodge. And then along comes the smallest thing…a kind word, a smile, a look of love…and something shifts. The movement may not be as strong or as powerful as what moves the barge but it creates a change that gives courage and hope and the current of it carries us to a new place. 

Like the river, the tugboat is quiet. The river is moved by currents unseen to us and yet we know wisdom hovers near, is present, is true. The tugboat is built in and moves with humility. There is gift in that for both boat and human. Standing on the shore, if we wait and watch, we can be held in something that goes deeper than what appears on the surface. Both river and boat ‘hold the stillness exactly before us’.

As the poet writes: ’What the river says, I say.’