It's Still Life

The Liturgy for Riverbraid (the water that listens)

I. The Carrier of Time
Not emerald. Not jade.
But river-green — dark as silt and shadow.
It carries stories
without speaking them aloud,
shifting with the light:
like memory surfacing,
then sinking again.

Riverbraid does not rush
to reveal itself.

II. Of Discipline and Attention
This is not passive watching —
it is presence without interference.

Discipline of attention
in places where sound, spirit, and history
move as one current.

It is water that hears.
Voices that do not demand response —
only recognition.

Riverbraid teaches:
Some presences are not for crossing.
Some voices wish only to be acknowledged.
To listen is the offering.

III. Of Temperament
Measured.
Ancient.
Amused by human urgency.

It does not hurry.
It does not persuade.
It does not explain itself.

It waits
to see who knows when to stop speaking —
when to release the need to follow,
to take,
to translate the untranslatable.

IV. Of Elementals
Water braided with air and memory.
A channel that carries language
without belonging to it.

This is the alchemy of Riverbraid:
Not to move the river,
but to let the river move through you —
carrying what it must,
leaving what it will.

V. El Mohán’s Lesson
From the silt-shadowed deep,
the river spirit whispers —
a voice like stones turning in the current:

“You came to ask a question.
But the river does not answer.
It reflects.

The truth is not in what I say,
but in what you hear
when you finally stop speaking.”

VI. The Reveal
May you learn the difference
between an invitation and a boundary —
and honour both.

And when you stand before what is sacred,
may you have the wisdom
not to cross,
not to claim,
but to behold.

That is enough.
That is everything.

Wisdom lives not in what we take
but in what we allow the world to teach us,
when we are quiet enough to hear.