The Current

Almost 2 years since my last post here. There are lots of reasons for that, some of which include the intensity of life, my own internal struggles, as well as the general feeling that I might not have anything to say. I've actually had to lots to say, and I guess I've said some of it, just not here. Anyway, what's been said or hasn't been said doesn't matter much at this point.

My last post here came after sitting on the bank of the Mississippi in Minneapolis on a Sunday afternoon, taking in all the life being lived around me, as well as the life I was living at the time. A lot of living has happened since, just not the kind I really wanted to participate in. But, lived in it and through it I have, and just like the current of the Mississippi that presented itself to me that April day, my own current has continued to move and to take me where I needed to go, even if I haven't always agreed with where it's taken me, or where it has me right now.

I just recently finished a project (more on that in March) that required me to think a great deal about standing, about moving and about how this river called life refuses to cooperate with my occasional complacency, fear or desire that all my dreams and goals just fall into place for me, and that they all fall into place NOW. I realize this sounds very simple, but I think most of life is...I didn't say easy, but simple. Life is simply about choices, the choices we make about both our opportunities and our challenges, as well as the choices we make about our responses when our initial choices don't necessarily work out the way we intended or hoped that they would. Maybe those choices make up the current to which I'm referring, the things that take us to previously uninhabited places. These are the places we could not have seen and experienced without stepping into the current that responds to our choices, but that isn't governed by them. My journey on this river is an outcome of how I've responded to the amazing opportunities and the crushing disappointments that have met me at an earlier spot along the river.

So, 2 years later I continue to watch the river do what only it can do and I continue to be moved by it and down it. So much has happened since that day in Minneapolis and so much hasn't happened. I have experienced many things I didn't expect or want, and I continue to wait on things that I am convinced are way overdue. But, I am in the current. I continue the journey along the river that changes everything. I am alive.