Rivers of Our Delight
The Flow Stories Collection no. 3Life on the Danube
drenches the soul in our eternal joy, the joy that emanates from quite literally going with the flow.
The day was dark with heavy rain clouds when we boarded the bus that would ferry the four of us from Vienna to Melk Abbey. Well, technically from Vienna to the port where we would pick up the riverboat.
What do you do when floating down a river with your family and the locals are touting improved weather as the journey goes on? Sit back, relax, and go with the flow. The Danube is a river of history and legend. Her waters have inspired music to dance to, stories of love, and poets. Ten minutes of sailing her sweet waters revealed her magic. She rolls along like a lilting summer breeze, the kind that brushes your brow with a kiss and touches your heart with a tingle of magic.
Mind you we were traveling with a fifteen year old and an eighteen year old at the time. Our son was about to go off to college, and our daughter had just finished her freshman year of high school. But we were off on an adventure, and the day was brightening slightly as we made our way up river. Family squabbles gave way to laughter, light hearted play. As we rounded the bend to Melk Abbey, the sun blazed through the cloud cover, and skepticism gave way to joy. By the time we were seated for lunch in the courtyard, the sun reigned supreme.
Blue sky framed the abbey. Its white and melon color teased the senses and therefore drew my attention. Ornately appointed in design, Melk Abbey lavished my heart with brilliance in the midday sun, melting away sorrows of a deeper sort. There was a boldness here. The Benedictine monastery was as bold in its color choice both outside and inside as it was in its social programs. I liked both. Once inside, we wandered through the displays of monastery artifacts. Each room was illuminated with a different, color intensive light – a bold use of lighting to enhance a mood or message. We slipped from one mood to another in a quiet flow of subtle emotions that enhanced the visit inexplicably. Grace is a many splendored thing.
Melk Abbey ended with a real treat. A gilded library of ancient texts climbing to the ceiling, threaded by a spiral staircase, visually stunning in its entirety, called the spirit to soar. What had the ancients written in those texts? Our hearts and minds took note and remembered this stunning ending to the Melk Abbey visit. But when the spirit soared amongst the manuscripts, gilded shelves that also soared toward heaven, and the rungs of the graceful stair steps, life couldn’t get much better nor more in flow.
Once back aboard the riverboat, the day slid sweetly through the waters of the Danube to a place in our being I can only describe as a delicious reprieve. We had stepped back in time; we had taken a journey into ancient waters, had found something sublime, and had experienced flow. When life is lived most freely and joyously, we experience flow; we live in the moment. We find the sacred revealed in unexpected moments. We treasure those moments as they unfold and then again repeatedly over the years.
Much of our lives we spend in pursuit of particular goals with desired outcomes. We measure our happiness by how closely we are approximating those goals and outcomes. Flow offers a delicious reprieve and hugely rich alternative for living.
“We allow life’s waters to bring us whatever they may, and those waters unfold a bit at a time, remarkably in alignment with and spiritually attuned to our deepest needs and hopes.”
In much of our lives, our efforts are geared toward trying to make things happen a certain way at a certain time. In flow we step outside of time and allow realities to come into being in accordance with a process that we do not control in the least. In flow, we do not need to control what happens next. We are brought to our knees, and yet our spirits soar.
Life was smooth sailing on the Danube, living in flow. The return voyage took us past farms and villages we had passed before on our way to Melk Abbey; but flow brought a new way of experiencing what crossed our path. The river wound her way through a lush countryside, dotted with castles of old. What had these kings thought when they built them? How many souls had passed this way? How many farmers had left their farms to their children and their children’s children? Flow takes us out of our time-bound myopia: the unbroken chain of lived life slips into our consciousness and broadens our perspective. It was almost dark by the time the riverboat pulled into port, and we left behind the beautiful Danube and her silky waters. When life moves more slowly, as it does on the Danube, we slip more easily into flow. Life’s journey lives there.
