A Flow that Courses Beneath Our Lives

Rivers.  Every continent on this planet has at least one major river that forms a backbone of life. There is the Nile of ancient Egypt.  The Mesopotamian Tigris and Euphrates of Biblical proportions.  The Mississippi.  Not to mention the Ganges, considered sacred, so important is it to India.

I remember once in my very early adulthood looking out a railway-car window at night as the train I was on crossed over the Mississippi River.  Even though I had read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn growing up in school, only then, as I saw that river's serpentine twists in the moonlight, was I able to truly understand how Huck and Jim were able to experience that river as both a source of safe places to hide and as a treacherous place for navigating in the fog.

celebrating the Festival of Lights
by floating lamps on the Ganges

Obviously, rivers are composed of water, and as such participate in all the symbolic meanings of water, no matter which shape the river takes.  However, because rivers are massive and flowing, they have carried additional layers of symbolism -- ones that draw upon the aspects of depth and of time.  (As the early 20th-century author Thomas Wolfe knew when he titled one of his novels Of Time and the River.)

The story of humankind has been filled with tragedy and comedy, mischief and virtue, chaos and order.  Through it all, rivers have been not only a physical means for life-support, but also a way for faith-traditions and writers to find a way of supporting the fragile boats that our lives sometimes become.  Rivers have thus served as symbols that penetrate into the often hidden continuity of our existence amid all of life's flux.  Amid all the twists and turns of life.

contemporary ferryman in India

I do not know of any novel where this layer of
symbolism is used to better effect than in Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (1922), in which the author fuses Eastern Buddhist thought and Western psychological insights.  That book follows the life-course of a man from early adolescence through his middle years and into his later years -- as he struggles to find an integrity and meaning for his life.  Both as a young man and as old man, he crosses the same river, while that ever-flowing body of water and the ferryman provide a continuity. During one of their encounters later in life, the ferryman guides him with this lesson:  "The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too.  The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it.  You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths."

The 14th century Christian mystic theologian Meister Eckhart had a gift for spiritual teaching. Part of that gift lay in his ability to speak of the Eternal in ways that helped his students discern God not as an abstract concept but as a Force underlying their own ordinary lives.  Eckhart drew upon many metaphors to do that.  Once he wrote:

"God is a great underground river

 that no one can dam up  and no one can stop"

~~~

Have you found a continuity in your life that helps sustain you?  What is it?

(The Hesse quote is from Siddhartha [1922], trans. by Hilda Rosner, © 1951.  p. 86.)

(The Eckhart quote is taken from Wrestling with the Prophets by Matthew Fox, © 1995.  p. 13.)

(The first photo is by User:Pradeep211, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

(The second photo is by Steffi, upload by Herrick, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)