Just north of town, the river turns toward the city, where it debouches into the larger river that will carry its waters into the St. Lawrence at Montreal. It's not huge, our river, but it's a good size--substantial, respectable. It comes from a series of pretty lakes to the south-west, forming (with a canal) a water system much used for fishing and boating. It is also the boundary between us and the metropolitan area; while crossing the bridge, we rural unsophisticates like to meditate on the difference in property taxes with a gently ruminative smile. The river doesn't dominate the landscape--it's not like the St. Lawrence, a noticeably Great and Historically Significant River. But it's *there*, and it has its own character and history.

Right now, toward the end of spring runoff, the river is broad and calm; it looks placidly monumental, like Queen Victoria in old age. It seems almost static except for the odd ripple. There's hardly a hint of visible motion. But that's deceptive. In fact, you're looking at God alone knows how many thousands of tons of water, millions of cubic metres of water, all in rapid, irresistable motion, pouring north at high speed toward its final waterfall in the heart of the city.

Think of a river with any sort of real awareness and its sheer weight and power become overwhelming. Think of the mass of it pushing downstream--try carrying a good-sized carboy of water any distance, and then multiply that weight by several million to get any idea, as though the mind could wrap itself around such an immensity. And this is only a not-very-big river. It goes into a much larger river, which in turn flows into a very large river, the St. Lawrence--and that in turn goes into the sea. The volume and mass of all this water, the power and majesty of this movement, is simply staggering.

We think of the river as Canadian property, and legally so it is: its banks and bed belong to this country, not to (say) Estonia or Peru. We share the St. Lawrence with the U.S., and there is a defined and carefully lined-out boundary line running invisibly through its grey-green grubby depths. We own out to yonder from our shores, and other countries aren't allowed to catch the fish there and have to obey our laws.

But can water really be owned? Who owns the geese flighting north in their Vs at this season? Water is like cats: cats don't "do" ownership relations. This river's water is in equilibrium with the water vapor in the air over it, and you can no more own that than you can own the air itself. The river system is replenished by rain from water vapour that may have been part of a river in Estonia or Peru, or from offshore waters belonging to no country at all.

Water is free. It's bound by its own regimes, inherent in its physical and chemical structure: it has its melting point, its boiling point, its partial presure, its specific density, its peculiar structure in both the liquid and solid states. It has its own imperatives, and they are not always ours. We can, we think, control it. Until it decides otherwise. Think of the Mississippi floods, or the Red River and Saguenay disasters, or tidal waves, or the great ice storm that left its heavy mark on these woods and forests. Water does its own thing, and if we have a problem with that, it's our problem.

So: if a simple smallish Canadian river is this large, this powerful, and this tenuously under our control (if we have any at all, which is another question), whatever gave us the out-to-lunch idea that we can own and manage God?

"Oh, of course, we'd never for a minute think we could do that!" we'd say, with some mixture of smugness, amusement, and theological hand-flapping. Oh, but we do! Look at how we define God, characterize God, hold back God's mercy from this sinner or that, claim God for our side and deny God to the enemy, constrain God to be like this or that. Don't fret. It's a very human tendency. We'd like to dress God in human clothing, like a doll, making God one of *us*, cute or vindictive, depending on our need of the moment, or a Big Daddy Boss to be placated and pleased, or someone who has to answer our logic and expectations--on trial for the Problem of Evil. We do think we own God. Look at how much time we spend telling the other person that he or she has got God all wrong.

It's something we have to be careful about--a tendency we all must be aware of and on guard against. If you think you can hold back God from some other Miserable Offender, deny God's love to someone, go look at a river and imagine stopping it in mid-flow. I don't think so.

The pickerel in the river can't see the river; he can only sense what water lies around him, tasting the scents from upcurrent. The duck on the river knows the river only in her limited ways. The dragonflies, the cat's tails, the water weeds, the herons, know the river so very intimately, and so very poorly. The difference between them and us is that we claim to understand what lies around and above and under us; they merely are with and in the water.

God's love, the Holy Spirit, goes where God's nature tells it to go, just as water does. It is as much in our ownership and control as is the sea. Like water, it is in and about and around us, in ever fibre of our being, and we depend on it utterly without even understanding how much we need it. Our lives float in it. We may understand this reality and be grateful and awed by it, or we may be so preoccupied with our own me-centric concerns that we don't notice.

But God's love is still there, steady and broad as the river, quietly powerful and peaceable as the river--but big enough to float whole galaxies, whole universes, gently as a duck on the river, and of a power we cannot begin to imagine.