Whirlpools

River is flowing, on and on, relentlessly and incessantly. A moving pattern of rippling and ruffling, of cresting and creasing; self-creating and self-maintaining. Where does River come from and where does River end? River ends at the beginning and begins at the end.

Whirlpools travel down with the stream, distinct points in the pattern. Some spin cleanly and strongly, opening a vortex in the water; others are mere surface disturbance, messier and shallower. The Whirlpools draw in bits and pieces of debris, spin them around and let them go. They pass me by, busily with their spinning and travelling. Now there is a whole gang of them coming down together, travelling along the edge of an upwelling.

I don’t often see whirlpools form – they mostly do that privately upstream when something in River spins them into being – but I watch them pass and I watch them die. When their energy goes, they are simply no longer there. They dissipate, disperse. Not a trace. Fading back into the River stream.

You and I are whirlpools in the Great River of Life, disturbances in the fabric of the cosmos. We begin in the dark, hidden in mystery. Carried along by the Great River, we spin around busily for a while, drawing in bits and pieces as we go along, creating our own little self-important world. And then, like a whirlpool, merge back to the flow. Whirlpools don’t struggle to stay alive. When they’ve done their thing, they just fade away.

So do we. When we have had our turn, our little time of beauty, we are once again back in the River of Life. Where we always have been.1