Last Monday Mary, a very good friend of mine from Hamilton Ontario, convinced me to canoe down the Grand River from Cambridge Ontario to Paris Ontario. We hired the canoe from “Grand Expeditions” who kindly delivered us to the beginning of our journey to paddle downstream back to where Mary had parked her car. The day began with rain which soon cleared and we fell into the rhythm of the river. Mary is an experienced canoeist – I am not, so there were a few tense moments as I learned the art of steerage.

We talked a good deal about the landscape we travelled along. The river changed from shallow to deeper – from still to small rapids. Many of the maples trees on the banks of the river were changing from green to red to yellow. The shapes of some rocks hinted that they were once monuments where ancient cultures found magic and mystery. A single deer watched with caution as we glided by.

I held in my head for most of that river journey the words of John O’Donohue, "I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding." It is not so easy to live like that. More often I live in anticipation of the end of the journey, or distracted by thoughts beyond the present moment of the journey. But that’s OK, both life and the river have a flow and a rhythm that calls one to gently paddle to arrive at where one needs to be. Yesterday, I walked with my son Nathan, his wife Courtney and their three little ones, Joanne, Noah and Naomi by the shore of Lake Huron. The wind had whipped the lake into a frothy frenzy. The water had white caps to rival any Australian beach. As we walked with coats tightly held, the children collected ladybugs while the adults stood in awe of the lake transformed into some wild beast.

There is a line in Judith Wright’s poem, I Love a Sunburnt Country, which speaks of the Australian landscape and “her beauty and her terror.” Of course it is not just Australia that experiences the beauty and terror of the landscape, all people know the delicate balance between the beauty of nature and its awful terror. And those of us who are religious can fall into the trap of dichotomizing these two experiences of life rather than understanding that that which brings beauty and life can also show the face of terror and even death. We swim in lakes and rivers but we also drown in them. That maybe harsh but it is reality.

I think the physical landscape helps us encounter and explore a spiritual landscape within. Our soul can be shaped, nourished and nurtured as we contemplate the diversity of the landscape around us. How often has the Biblical author used the river as an image of life; or the lake as an image of fearfulness or even death?

So I take these two images as both authentic to the inner life; the flow and gentle rhythm of the river and the fierce windswept lake. I would prefer only the first, but I know that both are necessary for life in all its fullness.

Christopher N Page