“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” (Ecclesiastes 1.7)
Like so many lines in Ecclesiastes it’s up to us how we receive this. It can be a meditation on the pointlessness of all things – the river as Sisyphus, ever striving, never succeeding. I’d wager that’s how most people read it. But to me it’s profoundly hopeful and life-affirming. We are never going to run out of life, the source and the goal are the same, and what we may experience as the day to day minute to minute passing of time, slipping through our fingers, is really a slice through the infinite present moment of God.
One of the gifts we may receive in silent, listening prayer is to enter more and more into that single eternal moment in which past, present and future are one, striving is but another form of being, the river and the sea and the clouds from which the rain fell flow from and into one another.
If we hear an echo of the notion of perichoresis, the eternal intermingling dance of the three persons of the one holy trinity, maybe we are onto something.
With all that in mind, let us go to the river.
Any river will do. If you live in London you can easily get to the Thames. You might want to consult the tide tables and go at a time of day when the waters will be low enough you can get down onto the beach. There are numerous places to do this: my two favourites are Barnes (there’s a slipway a few hundred yards down stream from Barnes Bridge Station) and Rotherhithe, readily accessible by the London Overground. But wherever you live you are unlikely to be too far from a river. Again, Google maps is your friend.
Find a riverbank where you can hope to have quarter of an hour to yourself, ideally out of earshot of traffic. Maybe even quite a small river. But perhaps not a stream – that’s to say, something deep and broad enough that it doesn’t burble and splash, but flows smoothly.
Dip a toe or a foot in the water. Find a comfy spot to sit, close enough that you can hear the water if it’s making any sound. The river is flowing to the sea where its water will mingle with the waters of the wide world and in due course become vapour, mingle with the clouds and be poured out on the sources of other rivers. Sit. Breathe. Listen. Here. Now. In the eternal moment.
Season of Silence 