The Clark Fork River and Love
“And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them. We can love completely without complete understanding.”—Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It. University of Chicago Press.
I remember being in Missoula, Montana, visiting our daughter, Joanna, and her husband, Dennis, with our oldest grandson, Mac, and his dad, John. Our hotel is directly on the banks of Clark Fork, and the river is racing in real-time by our small porch on the first floor. We are mesmerized by watching the high-speed water, but the sound of the raging river enters our being and, indeed, runs through us. It calms. It soothes. In its orchestral movement, it is peaceful. It sounds like a wind instrument, perhaps a distant Native American flute. Sometimes it has the “Om” sound chanted in yoga and eastern meditation. We begin to know the stillness of sitting or standing, and simply observing the wonder of something too magnificent for words as it rapidly goes by. We can become so relaxed that we fall asleep. Water, moving or still, has healing powers that we cannot understand.
I have watched Robert Redford’s movie, A River Runs Through It, with all of our children and most of our grandchildren. We can often quote lines in the film and answer back the responses. Stop now if you have not read the book or seen the movie, because I will spoil it for you.
The story is about the Maclean family, a father and two sons, Norman and Paul, growing up fly-fishing in Missoula, Montana. The words quoted today are near the movie’s end, preached in one of the father’s last sermons.
I could almost hear Norman’s father when we rode by that same brick Presbyterian church yesterday on the way to get ice cream. The father indirectly talks about Norman’s younger brother, Paul, who died an early traumatic death related to his addictions.
As I watch and listen beside the Clark Fork, where the Macleans lived and loved a century ago, I also think of those I could not understand but wanted to love completely. Today, my prayers are to continue to try to hear these words from Norman’s father about them. Of course, there are also those I cannot understand and may never be able to love the slightest bit, much less completely. I pray to see them in a new light, to see the Christ in them.
Loving without understanding may be on the path to unconditional love, God’s love. It is also the balm to heal our differences. Om.
Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/