A person kept trying to rearrange the river.
They stood on the bank every morning, sleeves rolled up, worrying the water with their hands. This bend was too sharp. That current too fast. That reflection too dark. Surely, they thought, if I push here and block there, the river will finally go where it is supposed to.
An older traveler watched for a while and finally said, very gently,
“The river is already at the sea.”
The person bristled. “Then why does it look like this? Why does it twist and stall and flood and dry up?”
The traveler smiled. “Because that’s how rivers arrive.”
Creation, it turns out, was never about forcing the water to behave. It was about learning when to step in, when to step back, and when to simply let the current teach you its language.
The person tried something new. They stopped shaping the river and began walking alongside it. They cleared a fallen branch here. Stepped away when the water surged. Sat down when the light hit just right. Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing miraculous. And yet, the river kept moving.
Later—much later—they noticed they were no longer anxious about where it was going.
This is why the old stories sound the way they do.
The gospels speak in seeds and loaves and lilies because growth does not listen to lectures.
Disney (and other commercial storytellers) sings because truth sometimes needs a melody to get past the guards.
Parables work because they do not grab you by the shoulders and shout. They trust you to recognise yourself quietly.
“Creation is finished” is not a command. It is a reassurance.
“Let it go” is not abandonment. It is consent.
“Set it and forget it” is not laziness. It is faith in motion rather than supervision.
You are not here to invent the river. You are here to learn how to walk with it without trying to drown it in instructions.
And sometimes—because humans are humans—the universe slips in a word like ketchup* just to make sure you do not take the mystery so seriously that you miss the joy.
That, too, is part of the teaching.
*During that walking through spiderweb mid-phase between sleep and waking I heard, “creation is finished so there is nothing to change… ketchup.”
Ketchup?
It must have been catch up but it made me laugh.
