Recently, my husband and I took a sweet day off together. Since the weather was stuck in a pattern of rain, rain, and more rain, we abandoned our plan to scout out a place for him to flyfish, with a shaded spot nearby for me to read and to write. We settled instead on a day inside, a day filled with lovemaking, eating a variety of special foods we do not normally eat, and watching A River Runs Through It, a cherished movie we had not seen in 30 years.
This luxurious film ends with Robert Redford speaking these words in voiceover: "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time...I am haunted by waters."
And I am haunted by those words and the essence they hold. This film is ostensibly about a family living in Montana in the 1920s, but it is really about the splendor of the natural world, and as Roger Ebert put it, about "elegance, grace and honesty, in accord with nature." As we watched this movie on that sweet rainy day far from the Montana and Wyoming rivers on which it was filmed, we found ourselves inspired to live in just that way, with elegance, grace and honesty, in accord with nature.
Thinking about it now nearly three weeks later, the beauty of that haunting fills me, pierces me, and calls forth something from deep inside, particularly the scene at the end of the film which a quick google brings now to my laptop screen. The narrator Norman MacLean appears as an old man fishing in the solitude of the river, "in the half-light of the canyon."
And once more, I am mesmerized. I see again the care with which he attaches the fly, the unhurried swing of the rod back and forth, the line trailing leisurely before landing upon the glistening water, cliffs rising majestically along the river's edge as blue sky stretches above...and tears come to my eyes.
I have no interest in flyfishing, but I am enthralled by the natural world. It brings me alive and the reason is obvious. I am part of that world and when I enter its pristine environs, even through memory or a computer screen, something within me leaps in response. I wake up. I remember. Yes, that's it. I re-member myself into relationship with All That Is. Though Norman MacLean reminds us that all things eventually merge into one, the truth is that all things already are one, and in moments of breakthrough magic we merely know it again.
A line from the delightful children's book The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill hopped off the page at me just this morning. "Magic is the most fundamental—and yet least understood—element of the known universe." It is, of course, impossible to understand because, well, it's magic. And magic can only ever be felt. It must be comprehended, instinctually and spontaneously, through full-bodied experience rather than merely being grasped with the mind alone.
Such magic awakens us to the Mystery that is already there, ever and always. Then it is up to us to stay awake, no small feat given brains designed to become inured to, even oblivious to, that which is always present. But still, it is our task. Peter Goninan, a character in Charles de Lint's novel, The Little Country, puts it this way: "if you don't want the magic to fade, then learn to wake up and stay awake." Sounds simple, but how exactly do we do this?
Faith traditions offer practices, suggestions for waking up, but it is for each of us to take those that best fit our temperament, weave them through our lives, and consistently tend those strands. Then their beauty will be thrilled to shine more readily...with elegance, grace, and honestly, in accord with nature.
Much love,
Leia
