From the Heart of a Bear

For some reason today, I have been obsessed with waterfalls: their meanings, looking at them, surrounding myself with their imagery, recalling their sounds. I've been having a crappy morning, internally frelled up. I told my wife that I'm so anti-social today that I don't want to see people, talk to people, heck, I don't even want to LOOK at pictures of people. Maybe that prompted my search for scenery and then specifically images of waterfalls on the net. I came up with attached image along with half a dozen others like it. I wish I could just sit with my back against a rock and fall asleep listening to that scene. Places like this are happy places for me. So I decided to look for waterfall symbolism and what they mean... yeah, after finding crap on a new-age "find your medium" sites, Chinese tattoos and dream symbolism, I scrapped that approach and went where I should have, the Bible. I can't recall anywhere the phrase waterfall is used. A quick visit to biblegateway.com found that the only mention in the NLT of a waterfall is God's out-poured wrath, not the most encouraging phrase, but something that I'm feeling like is my lot right now. I didn't stop there. Tried a search for flowing water.

And the heavens opened and the Spirit of God rested upon me and my tears began to well... no waterfalls at work please. Found this passage specifically v.7:
Deuteronomy 8 - A Call to Remember and Obey

1 “Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today. Then you will live and multiply, and you will enter and occupy the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors. 2 Remember how the LORD your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. 3 Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.4 For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell. 5 Think about it: Just as a parent disciplines a child, the LORD your God disciplines you for your own good.
6 “So obey the commands of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and fearing him. 7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land of flowing streams and pools of water, with fountains and springs that gush out in the valleys and hills. 8 It is a land of wheat and barley; of grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates; of olive oil and honey. 9 It is a land where food is plentiful and nothing is lacking. It is a land where iron is as common as stone, and copper is abundant in the hills. 10 When you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.
Most of the images that caught my eye this morning are like this... flowing streams and pools of water. Guess I'm not as broken as I think I am. Dang... I need a tissue