A River of Love

I love going to the water in the summer.

What if the water also loves us back?

That’s the core image in a song that my musical collaborators and I added to our repertoire this year.

The story behind the song highlights two things I love about the folk process:

• Tapping into culture helps me fully inhabit a more reciprocal relationship with the earth.

• Folk traditions braid together the old and new; our new song is our English language rendering of Maayan Tzafrir’s gorgeous Hebrew language re-imagining of a traditional Turkish tune.

Here are the evocative lyrics:

The river of love flows to the heart, purifies and heals my soul
Take me with you, wash me with your love,
we will flow as one for ever my love
Take me with you, the garden of our love will bloom
Honey drips from your eyes sweetly embracing me
Take me with you, bathe me with your love,
we will flow as one forever my love

What if this is more than metaphor? What if the actual river is also a river of love?

I invite you to notice the river in the very spot where you are. Rain falling will gather into some creek or lake. These bodies of water, even the enormous great lakes, flow into rivers.

My heart expands whenever I recognize our waterways as the pulsing lifeblood of our mother earth. Seen that way, why wouldn’t they be flowing with love? 

What if your next summer swim is also a chance to be washed and embraced by love?

Imagine feeling ease throughout your life because you knew you were always flowing with love?

Love,

emily

Does the idea of awakening a new intimacy with the land make you tingle? Hungry to turn philosophical ideas of sustainability into whole body knowing? Come dance your way into a new way of being – drop in any week to the Wisdom Dances circle.