This morning I awoke with a deep-seated desire to get out of the city and spend the day in nature, preferably by going swimming and hiking at the Guadalupe River State Park near Bulverde. Fortunately, we can probably do it, because it's Monday, our day off. I can't wait to go. Unfortunately, first we need to spend an hour or two preparing the Circle newsletter for bulk mailing, then drive over to the Bulk Business Mail department at the Central Post Office for processing. Then get Mateo to a doctor's appointment and run another errand, before we can get on the road.
Then, if traffic allows, it will be another 30-45 minute drive, plus the time to deal with parking and loading-in before we could actually get our feet wet. Bummer. I'm guessing that we'll be lucky to arrive at the river by3pm, at best.
EAGER TO GO
Sure enough, the rest of the bulk mailing process takes longer than expected, because the registration form we'd completed at home has to be re-done when I got to the post office. The friendly, but unyielding postal clerk informs me that USPS Bulk Mailing Form #3602-NZ had been replaced by the brand-new Postage Statement, 3602N-1 - which fact I didn't find out until after I'd already filled out a Form 3605N.
And then there is the time-consuming process of being shuffled from one side of the huge postal facility to another and back, in order to pay the invoice and finalize the shipment.
Then it's off to the doctor's office, to meet my hungry son, who really wants to eat at a nearby restaurant, more than he wants to travel an hour north for a picnic and swim. So... by the time we finish eating lunch, re-negotiating our family schedule and making our way through the heavy traffic bottle-necked on Highway 281, we finally pull into State Park parking lot alongside the river at 4:30pm. By then, all three of us are feeling tired, hot and grumpy - and I'm wondering whose crazy idea this was anyway.
TIME TO LET GO
But five minutes later, as I wade into the cool, free-flowing water of the Guadalupe and lie down on a smooth, flat, semi-submerged limestone boulder in the middle of the stream, everything else fades into nothingness. Zet and Mateo have both gone off in their own directions. Now there is only this giant, age-old boulder beneath me, a clear blue sky above and the delicious sensation of the ceaseless river current washing over my neck, shoulders and torso, rinsing my cares downstream.
Every now and then, I hop off my perch to splash around in an adjacent swimming hole for a minute or two, before resuming my prone position on the rock and feeling the direct transmission of energy from the earth, sun, sky and water flowing to me, through me, as me. Truly. We are One. Ahhh...
ONLY DON'T KNOW
Soon enough the sun sinks behind the hill. In a few minutes it will be time to get up, dry off and drive back to the city to resume my duties as Rudi. It's all too easy to think of my experience here (submerged in beauty) as being separate from my life there (busy in the city). But the free-flowing song of the river asks me to reconsider this artificial division and urges me remember that the Infinite Stream of Life, Love and Light flows to me, through me, as me - at all times, under all circumstances. How and why this is so remains a deep mystery -- but that doesn't change the power and the possibilities of living from this place of unity, wherever I go, whatever I do.
At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
With love,
Rudi
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