The Water Bearer, Not the Water

I open my eyes and I wake, lying on my side in a clearing in a forest. There’s a creek flowing at my back, just a foot or so away—I hear it, but it’s not my focus. I don’t turn towards it.

It is where I want to be. I want to be in the water, with the water. I want to be the water.

But I am a water bearer, not the water.

So instead, I am lying shortly from the water, gently on my side, with the sun casting down in brilliant light and gentle warmth. No breeze, no stillness—a balanced flow of air. The ground beneath and around me is crumbled black earth. Rich, fertile soil. There are intermittent and still plentiful shoots of verdant grass, newly born and just the beginning. And this still is not my focus.

Lying on my side in the dirt scented with life and living, I am watching a stream of water arcing from the air through the side of my ribcage—surrounding and massaging my heart, and then flowing out the other side of my chest and into the soil.

This stream. This stream. This stream.

This stream and its work are where I am asked at this time to give all of my attention and energy.

This complex reality where things will always have a little grit and dirt—where things are not always as I would like them to be, and yet are what they need to be. After all, soil is unclean only when we make it so.

The complex reality where even when life seems smeared or muddled, we are constantly refreshed and renewed; refreshed and renewing—so long as we receive and live with and into it.

It all flows together. It’s perfectly imperfect.

It’s human.

It’s me.

So here is where I am now. Receiving, renewing, rebecoming.

Eventually, when I am able, I will be asked to rise. To carry the fire the stream uncovered inside my Self, and the water in my hands. To bear them inland for we who have not yet made the journey; we who may never be sent this way; and all who still need it.

And when it is time again to refresh, to renew, to rebecome, I will return with the water.

Always coming. Always going. Always becoming. Always traversing.