Sending love downstream
The drive to and from my home carries me along the Rio Grande. I love this river and the canyon, the dance of the flowing waters, towering trees, soaring eagles and big blue skies. Recently, driving home from town, I heard news on the radio about military being sent to the border with Mexico. That is where the Rio Grande flows. The news felt disorienting, an odd juxtaposition; the tranquility in the river canyon while farther south the escalating war.
Eventually, these river waters would flow by the people on both sides of the border. The river naturally connects the land and the people on all sides of the dispute, across the diversity of cultures, without any judgment of good or bad, better or less, right or wrong.
I started to wonder what I could do. Did I want to fight against the fight, adding more war to the war? Would I build a wall inside my own heart, adding more layers of separation between the “us” (good guys, of course) and the “them?”
What the river was showing me? Instinctively, I decided to send love downstream.
Love doesn’t discriminate. So I pictured what would happen when love flows along the river, touching everybody on both sides of the border, seeping through the wall and clearing away the dispute.
Imagine what a river of love could wash away — the blocks, the imbalances, the unsteady foundations. Imagine what could be seeded, take root, flourish and grow.
I’m holding the dream for a time when we stop making wars. When we forget what we’re fighting about. When the walls come tumbling down. When we look into one another’s eyes and really see. When we remember how to live centered in our hearts, flowing like a river, nourishing life.
So I keep sending love downstream. I hope you’ll send some, too. On the winds. Along the waters. Along the fibers of connection that naturally weave us together, all around our Earth, now and for the generations to come.
JoAnne Dodgson is a healer, author and ceremonial guide. She lives in Dixon.