Waterfalls

I find waterfalls to be the single most beautiful natural phenomenon there is. I could probably go to a setting like in this picture above, and, if the temperature conditions were suitable, I could watch this waterfall flow at least as long as I could watch a feature-length movie. There is something about the newness of every drop of water, the precise path it is destined to follow, the sound, the color, the humidity, the freshness it brings.

I was reminded of this the other day, after I posted the reference to Psalm 42 and the link to the song Sicut Cervus, when my children and I visited the Good Zoo in Wheeling. We spent a few minutes in rapt attention at the little waterfall there. What deer wouldn't travel for miles or even days to drink from living streams of water like this. What what a beautiful simile: as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul thirsts for you, oh God. When I look at a waterfall, I want to be one with it. In fact, when I lived in Japan I lived very near a famous waterfall, pictured below with the fall foliage.


The river these falls fed flowed down the mountain, and in the summer I helped myself to bobbing in the water at one of the much smaller falls. It is an ancient Buddhist practice to stand under the flowing water and let it pummel you, so I figured playing in the river near a small one had to be somewhat socially acceptable. I was so thirsty in those days I just couldn't bear to only watch the waterfall. I had to get in it. I had to try to alleviate the ache in my soul for Beauty.