at the creek

Not long ago I found a creek hidden in woods a few miles from my new apartment.  This creek has multifaceted personality, changing around every bend.  On innocent days I walk across the rocks at one of its sundappled shallows.  Other days I have waded into the claybeds among the deeper, quieter pools and replaced my clothing with a skin of clay.  (Don't look at me like that.  You don't know how much of it I shed and replaced and I'm not telling.  Also, you would do it too - and if you wouldn't, you need to more than you know.)  I sit among the branches of a fallen tree that part the slowly-moving water and watch the minnows chasing the shadows of floating leaves while the sun crusts my muddy coat.  I laugh when I picture myself.  And I listen. 

I used to worry constantly about every action and thought.  I was hung up on fears of insignificance and unworthiness.  I was certain that I would fail to live perfectly, and unsure that I wanted to try living at all.  Little leaf stuck on the rock jutting up midstream amidst sparkling moving waters, I think you hear me.  Eventually I burned out.  I swore off perfectionism - not an entirely successful resolution, but an attempt nonetheless.  I made a conscious effort to stop overthinking my actions.

And then somehow I stopped thinking about them at all - or at least, not really thinking honestly about my motivations.  If it had been a sharp or stark shift I would have caught it.  But I slipped into it like the leaf quivering against the rock in the middle of the stream, there one moment and lilting away the next without ever a splash as warning. 

So here I am twenty yards downstream now, circling in deep eddies around a fallen tree trunk, a little befuddled but guiltily not surprised.  When did I cross the line between appreciating and abusing freedom?  When did I stop seeing another human in line at Panera and start seeing "that hot guy with the fabulous pecs" that I am trying to point out subtly to my disapproving roommate?  When did I stop thinking about the meaning of words and start inserting "oh my gosh" every third sentence to emphasize the importance of yet another meaningless comment?  When did I stop taking accountability for my interactions and start blaming others for situations I create?  When did I stop being fed by the truth and start taking advantage of grace? 

I wade into the pool to splash the dried clay off, stirring up a silt of leaves and claydust from the creek basin. "The Lord God made man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life... . for dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Maybe the wrongness happens when I forget where I have come from and where I am going. Maybe it happens when I forget what I am. There is no wrong in being mud, or a leaf, or a stream. Unless you are out of your place... mud in the OR, leaves in the rain gutter, streams in the basement. Or when you don't do what you were made to do - build up the rest of life in this fragile world where everything supports and depends on everything, where Spring and Fall balance each other, where Life and Death are both necessary and neither final in the greater Movement behind it all.