A Flowing Stream

"When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come."
- Leonardo Da Vinci

As a child I loved to put my hand in a stream and let the water flow over over.  I love creeks, and streams and rivers.......still waters are beautiful, but I love the movement.  When I came across this quote by Da Vinci it reminded me of all those times I stuck my hand in an icy stream.  I love the imagery of a stream containing the past and the future.

Often when I do meditation classes, I speak of sitting by a stream, allowing that stream to move our thoughts so that we don't grasp them, we don't dwell on them.  You can also think of leaves being moved by the water, those leaves can represent your thoughts.......just observing them, never grabbing them, letting them float through your mind.

That flowing stream also represents how quickly life moves, what was upstream a few minutes ago, has already passed on by.  When my family lived in a small house on Main Street in Sumiton, Alabama there was a creek that flowed through our back yard.  I played on the banks of that little stream for hours, imagining all sorts of adventures.  There was a thick cushion of vivid green moss,
red rocks, and tree roots and the occasional snake.  My favorite adventure......fairies lived on the stream, I would become small and enter their world, flying on dragon flies, floating on leaves. Even then I loved the thoughts of a magical world......I loved the world that flowing stream allowed me to create.

After reading this quote, I will never be able to put my hand in a flowing stream again without thinking of Leonardo, without thinking of the past and the future.  I thought of fairies, he thought of life.