Through a river...

to a home

I’ve driven into this river bed since 1992…through a river, to a home. These 1900 acres in the Frio River Canyon have become a spiritual storehouse to me, packed with so many memories it would take another 33 years to unpack and catalog them.

Last weekend I entered the river again with a friend beside me, receiving a few days in this precious place as the sacred gift it always becomes.

As we turned into the water she said, “Do you want to get out?” So I did. I’d never stopped mid-river before; I’d always been alone. But I climbed out the passenger side, let the water cover my feet and ankles and stood in the silt and slippery limestone. When I turned to get back in the car, one foot slid sideways and I sat down rather ingloriously on the seat of my pants. If standing in the river was delight, sitting in it was an odd kind of baptism: an immersion into a timeless space where God always seems to show Himself to me in new ways.

This weekend, He was present again. In simple food, prepared with love and presented with exquisite care. In the precious faces of friends, old and new. In song and liturgy, in bread and wine. In twinkling stars and morning birdsong. In afternoon rain and glistening spider webs, in the bewitching smells of books and incense, cedar and warm cobbler. My senses almost felt too feeble for the feast. I couldn’t hold enough.

Somewhere in this place (I can’t remember the exact spot) these words from Edna St. Vincent Millay are etched on stone:

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! 
   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! 
   Thy mists, that roll and rise! 
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag 
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag 
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! 
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! 

Long have I known a glory in it all, 
                   But never knew I this; 
                   Here such a passion is 
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear 
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year; 
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall 
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

My jeans are still splattered with river and glory. I rinsed them in the Canyon water, then again in the shower, but the evidence remains. I dropped them in the laundry bin at home this morning, but I may reconsider, and keep what's left of a holy time as long as it will remain.

There is a river whose waters make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High lives. Psalm 48:4