Find Everlasting Peace in the River of Life Within
by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
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Readings
2 Kings 5:6-14
The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.” As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”
When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
Read the written message below with music videos
Thoughts are like the ripples on the surface of a river, just transient glimmers of awareness – hinting at the depths below. For whatever reasons, we have come to identify so much with our habitual ripples we miss the enormity of the river of life within – taking its vast depth, clarity, and peace to be a pit of emptiness as we fearfully try to color over it. When we turn more toward that river of life at our core by letting the ripples pass us by, dipping into the vastness of awareness with meditative and prayerful practice, we find that we become cleansed and renewed in its flowing holy water. In the book of Revelation, “the river of the water of life” is described as flowing from God into the centre of the heavenly city – I think inviting us as we read it to turn toward that river of the water of life flowing at our own heavenly centre, amidst the garden of all our gifts and expressions of life in their diversity.
The river of life is something we all share, but typically we have little interest in getting to know it better – especially where we find it most honestly: at the core of our being, the centre of our city. Like Naaman in the story, when we’re told to take some time to cleanse ourselves in that river of awareness we respond as he did, saying, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” (2 King 5:11b-12)
Yep! If you’re like me, the invitation to meditation and contemplative prayer can be easily written off. “Meditation, meditation, meditation. Why meditation? I hear it has its benefits but isn’t this advice supposed to be special? Doesn’t everyone say to meditate or to pray?” Differences in the details of these practices aside, I think we can relate to Naaman when it comes to shrugging when we hear another invitation to enter the river of awareness!
But like his servants, as a servant I must suggest, “Try it.” Like Naaman, enter the river and cleanse yourself seven times. Not just any river, but the river Jordan – which seems to represent the sustaining and cleansing power of the heart of life flowing within. It points to all the lessons and descriptions of contemplative, loving meditative prayer we see throughout scripture. The invitations to let go of thoughts and worries about the future and the past, releasing the distortions of our limited image of the world and ourselves, and our deluded yearnings. And seven, being a representative number, in many scriptures points to holiness and the fullness of life. Thus, we’re to enter this river seven times as it says – until we’re in the fullness of life, until we perceive our intrinsic wholeness, spiritual health, and our sourcedness and oneness in Divinity.
This type of meditation involves reconnecting with the Divine Love of God at the root of all life. It invites us into a state that’s similar to Christ’s compassion in his prayer when he says, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.“ (John 17:20-23a)
Coming to believe in each other is a huge aspect of compassionate awareness and one of the benefits of this type of meditative practice of letting the river of life wash over us. And I’ll note that I think that coming to believe in Christ as being “sent” by the Father, as described above, is less about condemning non-Christians to hell or getting history just right, as it is coming to see that the compassionate open love, the centeredness on the truth of higher awareness, and the importance of social justice and communal sharing that Christ exemplifies and invites us to are all from the One above and within. That these are values expressed and embodied by the Parent of all.
When we meditate on the river of life, the source of awareness within, and watch the ripples on the surface of life pass without yearning, distorted analysis, and fear, we come to know ourselves and God. As described in Revelation 22, centering on this Divine and largely undefinable river of life helps us to see that it is already central within us and can cleanse our minds from their turmoil and misconceptions, allowing the fruits of the trees of life to flourish in their time. It illuminates the truths of our unity in Christ, in Krishna, in God(dess) known by many names and that transcends all naming.
Interestingly, to successfully start to enter a meditative space of flow and compassionate peace, to follow Christ in the mode that he tasks us, it’s very much like getting cleansed by a river. It’s more about letting the river of awareness help us let go of things, than it is about obtaining something. This type of prayerful practice helps us to break down the false barriers in our definition of self, in a way both pointing to the idea that we are not our bodies (nor even our spiritual bodies!) and yet we are also everybody. That all is from God and everything serves to express the unity and diversity of Divinity, just as there is no one cause for any event since the entire universe must have a say in one way or another.
But perhaps we avoid this due to fear. Perhaps we identify too strongly with the ripples on the water of life to be able to dip a cup in. Upon losing a childlike wonder about life around us we’ve lost the wonder for the life within, not realizing that our entire world is only perceived within us and that the mysteries of life abound especially at their source.
Today, let’s give thanks to God for both the symbolic and direct invitations to meditative spiritual practice, a returning to the river of life always available within! May it let us let go of our false yearning and our false “knowing,” our attachment to the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and find revitalization and peace in the never-ending river of life from the Grand Mother. May we reconnect with that part of us always in that city described by Revelation 22, where we realize that our only true light is that from God, and that the fruits of the unshakeable faith found in the river of our intrinsic and compassionate awareness abound for all in our Divine diversity.
Peace and care to you,
Cory