When the Past is a Pool of Water by the River’s Edge

I scramble down the trail to the ravine, feet sliding on loose rocks, camera balanced on one hip.  When I catch my breath, I look up to see what I’ve come for:  the river, twisting green in the sun.

This is the place I come to when I need to think about the Past — need the sensation of something rushing away, disappearing around a bend. Today, though, as I leap across a line of boulders near the river’s edge, the Past just won’t recede.  A quiet hurt still lingers — as if dirty water washed over me and left a residue — and I can’t seem to scrub it from the gray matter.

Oh, mercy, I whisper:

Mercy.
Mercy.
Mercy. 

Sometimes it seems like the only prayer I know.

*

It would be an easy mistake, whether you know me by my words or in everyday life, to misread my gentleness as a deeper form of goodness.  To see me as the most shiny and unblemished sort of saint:  sweet-faced.  Sweet-voiced.  White-frocked, well-dressed — eternally clean.

People make this mistake all the time.

But the truth is, if I’m a saint, I’m one with skinned knees and a dented halo — a sinner, stumbling drunkenly toward some holy glow.  I’m a complicated creature, drawn toward complicated situations, with a penchant for getting lost … and when the Maker knit me together in my mother’s womb, he gave me the blessing and curse of a wandering heart and a ravenous mind.

Thank Heaven, he also made me a mouth to cry for mercy.

*

So I stand on the river’s edge, praying and shooting:  white water, muscling through rapids.  The light shattered like a mirror on the rocks.

Don’t let all this beauty fool you, I think.  This is a dangerous place.  Hikers have been swept to their deaths here, and the rangers have posted signs telling me so.

But my stubborn heart never could heed a warning.  And besides:  any place you go to hurl the hurt away from you is a place where you might be dragged under with it, if you don’t know when to let go.

*

Mercy.

*

On this day, the mercy comes as a flash of light at my feet.  I look down and see where the river has pooled in the boulders.  The pools have polished the stone smooth, and the water within is skinned with green moss.

I drop to my knees and adjust the lens. And I understand then, with this palmful of water in my viewfinder, that there are places in the heart where the past can get caught — where the hurt forms a pool. And who knows, then, how long it takes for such a wound to heal?  For a hollow of water to evaporate into sky??

But.  Even a moss-clouded pool reflects the sun, however faintly:

Even a scar is a wound that has healed, in its way…

*

I leap from the rocks to the sand.  Walk toward where the river curves in a calmer stretch.  My eyes hunt through the wreckage of old floods:  bottles and broken glass.  Tires.  Twisted tree limbs.

And I’ll tell you:  there is beauty everywhere, if you know how to look.  If you have eyes trained by mercy.

I stand very still. I am waiting, I guess, for the sun to make its way down into these small pools.  To turn them into flame.

I breathe — breathe — my fingertip tingling against the shutter button.

I’ll tell you a secret that every good sinner knows:

The Mercy is already here.  ❤