A river runs

by the window

The river was just outside our window. I could hear the rushing water from my bedroom. The tree branches were part of the view. It seemed like the birds began their day on those branches by my window. I can almost hear the wind on the leaves. The leaves were green and vines covered the the the rocks and much of the river on both banks. Some of the branches stretched almost to the middle of the river. I was a young boy and my time in the summers took me to the riverbank each day. Frogs, fish, snakes and rocks were the attraction. The rocks skipped and the big ones made ripples that sometimes if tossed into still water the ripples would travel to the other side. I don’t recall if the lessons that could have been learned from the ripples were even thought of then. Things change. The memories now suggest lessons. The ripples were of course easy lessons in cause and effect. Another question might be if at the time I did not see all of the lessons of these experiences then, why do I now seem to see some of them?

I am not suggesting that my time by the river really were life shaping. Stuff happens. You learn a lot from the real experiences you have. Plenty of things have happened over the years that were life shaping. It might be a stretch to look back and draw conclusions from things that at the time may have meant little. Even so the things that now seem symbolic do have a way of complimenting what we may have learned or how we may have changed even in just intensifying what we feel about it all.

I recall a number of years back an article in the Readers Digest. It said that before children could understand faith cognitively they had to understand it with their feelings.

Perhaps many of the things that happen to us in our youth are really learned through feelings rather than intellectually. Who we are may be the sum total of all that we have done but some things explain how we feel about it all.

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Men show their characters in nothing
more clearly than in what they think laughable.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau

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Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

If in fact it is true that before children can understand faith

cognitively they have to understand with their feelings

then the "ripple effect" of this might very important.