Anam Chara - The Flow of Life

I am deeply drawn to the above Irish Blessing.

This blessing works for me on very many levels. It includes many words I love. These are the words "listen, "river" and "trout." Two of these words, "listen" and "river" bring me into the present. The other evokes memories of the past. This blessing helps me become a presence and an evoker. I am able to evoke memory.

I have called this blessing "The Blessing of Flow." This is the nearest metaphor I have to explaining the essence of what it means to live in being and to be fully alive. This symbol of a river is a great image to represent the flow of life. It is a metaphor I evoke often in order to remind me that "I am" is flow.

I live close to a river.

This is the river Shannon in Ireland. I live close to the source of this river. I live close to where she rises up from deep underground at a place called "The Shannon Pot." This is a deep still place. At this place the water is dark peaty brown. It is a barren place. It is a place of silence. It is a place where one comes to listen. It is a place of rising up and a place where one might be lifted up.

To listen to the sound of a river is an act of presence. You have to be there with this flow of energy that has no beginning or end. You have to be with this metaphor of freedom of emotional expression. You have to be there as one who is sensing and sensational. Just sitting or standing one looks at this flow of life. Water is life and we are mostly water. One is reminded that one is simply a flow of energy. This is the flow of an eternal energy.

This Irish Blessing reminds me of the great Zen saying, "The river flows and the grass grows by itself." Such a beautiful and profound saying. I find all sorts of meaning in this saying. It is a saying that I love to relax into. The deeper I relax into this saying the deeper I go into allowing it to touch this soul.

This is a great Irish Blessing.

An Irish Buddha could almost have spoken it. It is a calling to be present. To catch a trout you have to be present. You have to be able to listen to the river. You have to be able to read the rhythm and the dance of the river. If you are not present to the river you miss. You have to know the river and then you will know that which lives in the river.

I spent many years between the ages of ten to twenty Fishing and reading rivers around my Home in the City of Armagh. I would lose all track of time. I would be happy alone on the bank of the Callen river. This would be day or night when I would go seeking that illusive trout. As time went on I learned to know the river. I learned its rhythms. I let the stillness and the meditative silence of being there enter my heart.

Many great teachers have loved rivers.

This Blessing uses the image of a trout as a metaphor for a living energy that lives in flow. I think this trout is a representation of soul. It lives in the essentialness of the flow of the Divine. When you listen, and this means you have to be silent, you will catch. You will catch a glimpse. This is a glimpse of the free flowing being you are.

Great teachers have spent time sitting beside rivrs learning to allow wisdom to arise. One of my most recent teachers via the written word is Anthony de Mello. I am presently reading his wonderful book "Walking on Water." This seems to be an appropriate title for the reflection on this Irish Blessing. This book is subtitled, "Reaching God in our time

I love a story that Anthony de Mello tells in this wonderful book "Walking on water." Let me share this story with you.

"A wise old boatman was taking pilgrims to a shrine. One day someone asked him," Have you been to the shrine?" "No, not yet," said the boatman, "because I still haven't discovered everything the river has to offer me. In this river I find wisdom;, I find peace; I find God." But the pilgrims didn't even notice the river, their minds were so focused on the shrine they couldn't see the river."

This is wisdom. This boatman must be a being of love. He is not yet interested in the shrine. A shrine means "a place for books." Too often these books become places where we practice not flow but fundamentalism. This means we ta