(For Tuck)

The days are closing in now. When I go for a long walk after supper, it's always at least dusk, and sometimes almost dark, when I finally cross the bridge upstream from my house, the bridge at the west end of town. At the central bridge downtown (such as downtown is) the creek turns abruptly smooth and broad, graduating in a matter of twenty yards or so from creek-status to very small river. But from there upstream, it's full of rocks.

Just as I crossed the western bridge at dusk the other evening, a thin strip of sunlight broke through the cloud cover, and for a moment one patch of the creek came alive with light, standing out against the grey water around it: silver inlaid on pewter, streaked sharply with shadows where the eddies curled around old boulders. It occurred to me to wonder, as I never had before, about those boulders. Where did they come from? Who were they?

They're probably a mixture of the local limestone and stuff that got dumped here long since by the glaciers. Compared to the ferociously beautiful Canadian Shield, just to our north and west, these rocks are young--a mere 500 million years (says the Canadian Geological Survey), while the nearest bits of the Shield are nudging their billionth birthday. Nonetheless, half s billion years is definitely antique. They've been around far longer than the creek itself, these boulders. Now they lie in the water being pounded and tumbled, blasted by the summer sun, invaded by ice-fingers, banged against other stones. They simply endure. You have to admire them for that.

Water seems so fickle by comparison--nothing you can put your foot on with any safety. Even in winter, the ice in this part of the creek is undependable. The water's patterns only seem fixed and permanent; put a finger into a water-formation that looked like it was frozen in glass and it instantly breaks into a different pattern. Water is soft stuff, slippery and unpredictable. Look at the creek, rising and falling with the seasons, torrential in the spring runoffs and meekly sluggish in August, a thing variable and moody. I can pick up a handful of water and it will run through my fingers leaving my palm wet and empty. What's that for someone to depend on?

Soft--but self-possessed. I cannot make water my own; it is, at best, only on loan to me for the moment. I cannot squeeze it or compress it or bend it to my will. You can't get a grip on water the way you can on a rock. You can control it to a degree, but not ultimately. It has its own laws, which are not yours, and it goes its own way, which may not be the way you want.

A rock, now that's a different matter. It's predictable. You can trust it; you know where you stand with it. You can build with rock; you can make things of it, make it your own, use it for your own purposes. Look at the grave handsome limestone houses around here, solidly based, feats of workmanship and propriety, of caution and forethought, strong and enduring. That's something to admire.

And of course, conversely, you can pick a rock up and throw it at someone's head, if you feel that the someone deserves that. Throw a handful of water and you won't get any respect, unless it's frozen water with a stone in the middle, and that's Cheating.

Worse still, while you can't throw water, water can throw you. It can come thundering down tearing everything before it; this country isn't subject to rockslides, but oh, how it can flood! Look at what water (frozen) did in the great storm last winter. Water is dangerously free. It sneaks up through the basement floor or down through a problematic roof; it sprays all over the joint when a pipe breaks. It ends up where you least want it, and not where you do want it, while rocks just stay where you set them.

But looking at the creek, there is absolutely no doubt which of the two, rocks or water, will win out in the end. There is no doubt which is the shaper, the motive force--which has the real power, which says "Go!" and which says "I must, because you make me go; where will I fetch up?" The water is an irresistible force. The rock is a moveable object, although sometimes it takes quite a while and a whole lot of persuasion for it to move. Ultimately water will wear away even older and tougher rock than this.

So: why as I leaned over the bridge's parapet and stared at that strip of silver water--why did those particular words come whispering into my mind: Love and the Law?

Because Love is the living water, and the Law is a good strong rock, a respectable rock, a worthy and ancient rock; but a rock is just a rock. You can set your foot on the Law and feel assured that it will bear your weight--but only if it's well-seated. Law, like a rock, can turn under your foot and send you sprawling if it's not soundly based, and then what use is all its hardness and solid definiteness? You can pick up the Law and hit someone else on the head with it, and feel strong and well-defended and full of righteous anger--and your victim will always have been asking for it, because you're a good person and good people only throw rocks at those who break the Law and deserve stoning. Yeah. Right.

But while the Law can't tumble you head-over-heels the way Love can, and it never takes you into interesting and dangerous places, the way Love does--so the Law won't keep you alive in the desert places of the heart, as Love will. It will not nourish growth and life, as Love does. You can live without rocks. Try living without water sometime. You're like me and everyone else; 80% water, as salt as the sea. I may and should build my house on rock instead of sand, but what will become of me without water? Certain death, and quickly.

I know in my very bones that onrushing Love will tumble the Law arse over teakettle, like a rock in the creek in spring runoff, smashing what is weak and flawed, shaping it, refining and smoothing it, proving what is really sound and should survive, and pounding into gravel anything with a flaw deep in it--although sometimes the Law will look sound and whole until that flaw appears. I know that the Law must ultimately yield to Love, just as in howevermany years, this poor sad excuse for a creek will reduce these ancient rocks to gravel.

I know I cannot stand atop Love as though I ruled it, or build my own desired structures with it, or hug it to myself as a personal possession, or control who gets it, or throw it at someone's head in pride or vengeance. But I also know that I can count on Love to bear me up and float me, if I'm willing to trust it and can see the power and deep order behind its apparent chaos. I can lie back in Love's arms and be held by it. I know it will carry me into and safely through white water, and float me into peace at the end. I know it makes me live. I know it will make me whole.

The living water of Love will be there when all the rocks --even the great grey handsome Shield--have fallen into the sun and are gone as though they never were. While the rocks were here long before the creek that now shapes them, they, and this earth, and the universe, and all creation from beginning to end, lie lapped in ever-flowing Love, that started before the beginning of Time and will flow right out the other end of it.

We are called in the end to Love, not the Law. On this truth, I can stand more firmly than I ever could on the strongest, most ancient, most respect-worthy rock, knowing however I set my foot, this soft unyielding firmness will not turn and let me down.

The last bit of light left; shadows crept over the creek, under the bridge, and the cold crept in. I pulled my jacket warm about me and set out through the gathering darkness for home.