There is a lovely story by Jonathan Livingston Seagull author, Richard Bach, that I intended to use in my book that didn’t make the final cut. It goes like this...
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil – the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks on the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life. Resisting the current was what each had learned from birth.
But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging I shall die of boredom.”
The other creatures laughed at him. “Fool”, they said. “Let go and the current will throw you tumbled and smashed against the rocks, and you’ll die quicker than boredom.”
But the one heeded them not. Taking a deep breath he let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to grab hold and cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
As he moved downstream other creatures to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! It’s a creature like ourselves yet he flies. It’s a messiah come to save us all.”
And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true adventure is the voyage.”
But they cried the more, “Savior”, all the while clinging to the rocks. And before they knew it he was gone. They were left alone and all they had were their legends of a savior.
I relate to this one. I'm someone who managed to let go of what people told me and set out to find the truth on my own. I don't claim to have found it. I think it’s something that reveals itself in stages. I'm just allowing it to happen.
But when I see people holding on to things that no longer serve them I feel the need to share the freedom that is waiting for their discovery. A great anxiety has overtaken us lately, in part because the God we trusted in the 4th century doesn’t make sense to us in the 21st. We no longer ascribe weather disasters, lost battles, or human sickness to the punishment of a supernatural god. But change doesn’t come easily in the realm of religious thought. Many would rather live with familiar beliefs than embrace an uncertain spiritual future. Heavenly Father images continue to be used in liturgy, sermons, and hymns because, as yet, we know of no other way to speak of him. I knew if I wanted to hold onto the idea of God I had to move beyond such thinking and find a new way to believe in him.
The twigs I held onto could no longer sustain me. I’m looking for something that will. Wherever the river takes me I will share what it is I see.
