2-6-2021 Please Put Me Back in the Water — I am Paddle to the Sea

In some situations we feel out of sorts, catawampus, off kilter-another version of this feeling is that we can feel like a duck out of the water.  We all need and thrive within certain environments and life contexts that feed, nurture, sustain, support, and encourage us.  We like to keep what’s comfortable, but when the security of comfort is our prime motivator we get stuck and become “kept” by this potentially overarching desire infiltrating all other motives, ideals, and life impulses.

We carry deep within us all a spirit of heart and soul that is our truest self.  Living out of any other  initiating point, point of origin, or core of stories, emotions, or ideas about what we demand or expect from life causes us to feel out of sorts.  There are certain behaviors we get  used to as we pursue certain desires we habitually hanker after.  We can become dependent upon certain ways of relating to life, others, and God that are detrimental to ourselves and others around us.  It’s only when we  awaken to our deepest truest self that we can feel once again the capacity and invitation to dance with life and hear the music of life enlivening us. We all need to be immersed in what God provides as the river and ocean of shared life lived out in love for the sake of all of life. 

As a very young person one day in our library I pulled off the shelf a book that would stay with me for the rest of my life.  An Aboriginal Canadian young boy carved a canoe and paddler sitting in the canoe up on the shores of Lake Nipigon (north of Lake Superior).  He loved his creation and he realized the inner spirit of this carved artwork needed to be set free.  He placed it in the waters.  After floating through many rivers, lakes, and a seaway eventually “I Am Paddle to the Sea” made it to the Atlantic Ocean and was set free. Freedom to be our deepest truest selves!  From Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God has made everything beautiful in its time. God has also set eternity in the human heart…”  Eternity living within every current moment.  An invitation: be fully alive and be your self that is already sacred!  Set free to journey!

My prayer for us all today:  God help us to allow ourselves to be set free in the currents of life in love and faith with purpose and meaning. Remind us that security is realizing our place is not set, but our process of being fully alive is to journey together by your grace oh God. Amen.

Curt DeMars-Johnson  – “I am Paddle to the Sea” and so are you and so are we all!!