“When You Do Things From Your Soul, You Feel A River Moving In You, A Joy.”

I’ve been carrying around these words from Rumi in my wallet for some years now. They remind me to work from my soul, from my true self.

Metolius River Photo by Michael Kennicutt

Near our home in Sisters, Oregon – where the forest, and the mountains, and the high desert meet – is a beautiful river, the Metolius. It is a wondrous river, the locals say, because it just “pops out of the ground” as a fully developed and crystal-clear, fast moving stream. (A science friend of mine says it has something to do with volcanic action eons ago.) To me, it seems like a storybook river, one that’s just so surprising and perfectly alive it seems like one you’d read about in a story or see in a film; but it’s real. For me, the Metolius calls: “Come be here with me, you’ll find your soul.”

The Metolius helps me find my soul by quieting me down.  It even helps a group quiet itself.  Our neighborhood’s annual meeting used to be held along the banks of the river. In those days, there was a sort of a local joke: no matter how disturbing the issue being discussed in the forum, the river smoothed things out. The river calmed us.

This past summer, Karen (my wife) and I camped along the Metolius, as is our yearly practice. Once each August for about a week, we drive the twenty minutes from our home and set up camp along the river’s edge. We watch, we listen, and we learn. Somehow, in some way, we learn what’s really important. The irrelevant evaporates.

This year I found myself contemplating those times in my life when I’d worked from a soul-place and the river ran through me. When I served a school community in Evanston, Illinois, during the desegregation days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, energy coursed through me; my values and work coincided. When I worked with the Alaska Native parents in Fairbanks, I felt immersed in the strong pull of co-creating the school with them. And when I was engaged in a series of “Courage to Lead” retreats with Portland principals, there was this river… a joy.

Listening to the river’s rush this past summer, I felt another joy that’s been, and continues to be, an important current in my life. It has everything to do with story – listening and telling stories.   The free-flowing stories I’ve been told this year: Paulina’s story. Deidre’s story. Mark’s story. They’ve been others’ stories, but I have found myself listening so carefully that they’ve seemed to be my own. Maybe that’s because these stories about best friends, families, loves, and even struggles with work are so universal.

Perhaps the river moving in me these days – during my elder time – is my deepening ability to listen carefully to my friends. Maybe the joy that’s mine in this time is the realization that I do not have to make a point or offer some clever thought. Possibly, the river’s lesson for me this year is: I am just to be with my friends, with my best friend and partner, Karen, and with all the others who are here with me – now.