Lessons from a Fountain

I'm sitting by the fountain in Bynum circle, watching the leaves float by and catching them before they get stuck in another loop in the fountain's current. It's late and it's kinda cold. The stars don't reflect this far down. I'm surrounded by the earth bound arcs of the stone benches that surround the fountain. The trees lean over the benches, protecting them but blocking the light from me.

I sit and watch my hand's shadow in the dim lamplight as I dip it into the water. It's funny, it looks like a hand before it hits the water and then after it's been in the water a little while, but if you let your fingers skim the surface, you only get the shadows of the distortions your hands cause in the water. I sit here, watching the water make a bracelet around my wrist's shadow, for a little while.

I think what we do in life is like that, sometimes. Right when you jump into something, all you can see are the ripples. It's like you've lost yourself for a second in what you're doing. But after a little bit, life settles down and you can see your imprint again, unless you just sit on the edge, forever disturbing but never jumping in.

Then again, sometimes I think the world that's in the relationship between us and God is like that. We think we're something else, we can even see a distinct shadow out of the water, out of God. And then we think that everything's coming to an end, we're not who we were, we can never get ourselves back, when we start getting into the water. But then the water settles and we come back. And it's not the same, it's different. But it's not wrong either.


Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.
--Soren Kierkegaard