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High in the mountains, a spring, its roots deep in the earth, sent forth a tiny new stream. The pure crystalline current rejoiced in the world it had entered. It flowed through alpine meadows carpeted in spring flowers — already giving them some of its life-sustaining water, yet also growing with the help of each melting snowbank it passed. The stream explored its new world avidly. Each bend was a thrill, each new landscape more wonderful. New currents merged with the stream, and each time there was new strength, new possibilities. It coursed onward, sometimes following well-worn channels, sometimes carving out a new route for itself. Sometimes it meandered, and an observer might have thought it had lost its way. Sometimes it flowed smooth and slow. Sometimes it flowed over rocks, turning to whitewater and rapids, with their brief chaos. Once it disappeared underground. But the flow continued onward. Even as the stream was nurtured and changed by these influences, it gave nurturance back, delighting the life it flowed through. Always, it continued to be itself. And always, the current grew stronger. More tributaries flowed in, mingling their waters. The stream had become a river. Only someone who had followed it from its origins could have known that this broad and powerful flow had begun as a tiny mountain stream. As your child’s river flows into the larger world, what is to become of it? Surely it will be put to use, for we need its power. Will the strength of its current be thwarted, coerced, misused? We can hope it will find ways to be free and yet useful. We can’t control what will become of it. We can only know that its start was a good one and wish it well on its journey. It flows beyond us. |
