Water
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Excerpted from Poetry of Life, my 4th book of poetry, available on Amazon or, as an e-book, Here. The book is divided into four sections: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. This is the intro to the Water section.
Water is the universal solvent, the primary solution we use to dissolve and cleanse all the messes we make in life. It cleanses not only earthly things and our bodies, but also, in the Christian tradition, our spirit through baptism. Water and fire complement each other. Both are transformative: Fire burns and water dissolves. Fire heats water for cooking and bathing, and water controls fire and stops its spread. Like air, water is essential to our survival. When water mixes with air, it becomes clouds in the sky, mist over mountain lakes, and fog on the ground.
Water makes up about 70% of our bodies and, strangely, covers about 70% of the earth’s surface, mostly in the form of salt water. The ocean is the great body that touches distant shores, that shifts and sways with the movement of the moon and the passing of wind. It absorbs all that falls into it. It supports an ecosphere of incredible diversity. The beauty of the sea is that it opens to everywhere, up, down, and all around!
The sea has always been a metaphor for the vastness of the Self and the unknown life that swims within us. The sea is predictable in tides and unpredictable in storms. So it is with our lives embedded in greater forces we barely comprehend. These outer forces are reflected in the inner forces of mood, emotion and the unconscious (the life beneath the surface) that drive our habits, steer our behavior, and run our impulses. We must learn to navigate these seas, to live with and to ride the currents of our impulsive nature, to sail between the predictable and the unpredictable, in order to find our way in life.
How do you deal with the sway of the sea and the changing tides in you and in your life?
© Nick LeForce
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