Life Is A River… And Puddles

MON., JUNE 2, 1986, 2:22 PM
CAMPUS, LAKESIDE

It is a grand and glorious analogy – life is a river. The expected vision is of a clear river between lush banks, flowing majestically along, sometimes leisurely and sometimes with speed and power. There are no eddies or backwashes… just clear progress toward the wonderful engulfing sea or ocean.

But what about “life is… puddles”? This is not nearly so grand. Little muddy puddles… stagnant water… drying up. Hardly anyone paints pictures or writes poems about puddles. Yet I offer this as an important part of the analogy.

Sometimes a life is a river… and then a puddle… and then a river again. Another life may experience these simultaneously. Some people have more river. Others have more puddles. The combinations are endless, but life, in general, is definitely both/and.

You know that it is said that light can be perceived and explained as waves… and also as particles. One is not like the other, and yet light seems to behave in both… unlike… ways. In like fashion life is continuous as a river is continuous. It has a beginning somewhere that can be clearly identified or at least estimated. It has a course, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower., sometimes swift and sometimes slow. And it does have a fairly identifiable end.

And yet even though you are no authority on rivers you know that most rivers are fed by streams, creeks, rivulets, lakes, and many other smaller bodies of water. In like fashion one life can flow into another, and a “mature” life can be an accumulation of many “lives.” The flow is still on toward the large body of water that doesn’t flow, even though it does surge and move. I have told you of your eventual return to Me… that “ocean” in whom are many who were once flowing rivers. And here it is again!

The puddle analogy is that life is also events or situations that have little or nothing to do with the flowing river. Something may be happening that seems neither to be moving you ahead or back. It may be pleasant or painful, but it just doesn’t fit with the flow of life (or at least it seems not to, at the time).

Our mutual friend Kris is now in a puddle. Actually, her life over the last several years has been more puddles than river. She says she is afraid to move out of the warm puddle into the flowing stream… and even contemplates ending her life because of this fear. She has not been willing to hold My hand firmly and consistently… and I know why, certainly. She has had help, and she has needed it, but she cannot yet see the value of her life, honestly in herself, rather than just what others tell her. Her life is potentially useful, and I would not be pleased if she tried to avoid living the major adult portion of that life. It shall be easier to move along in the river, along the banks and holding on from time to time rather than in the midst of the current, than it would be to come to Me in self induced death. There is not much you can do to help her, but you can urge her back toward the river.

There is nothing wrong with having puddles in your life. Some of life’s fine moments are, in our analogy for the day, really puddles rather than clearly part of the flow. And as you gain maturity in spiritual matters you shall see how the flow of life is enriched by the puddle experiences. Though there may not be a direct flow of one into the other, each is related, at least in mystical ways.