A river runs through it.

I think that was one of the slowest movies I ever sat through.

However, that was 15 years ago and it popped into my head for no good reason today. With it came the thought that this phrase has followed me around for many years.

I have spoken a lot over the past months about the ups and downs of living in this head and the ongoing battle against my own internal discombobulation. For me it it is very important to write down as a record what is on my mind, it has a twofold purpose, firstly to get it out of my head on to another place and secondly to have it as a future retrospective of my journey.

The third and unexpected factor is that other people read it, thank you.

Since man began building a place to stay they built it along river banks. It makes logical sense to put your habitations near a clean water source, it is only through time as the population grows and the water is inevitably polluted (because that is what we do) that we need to look outside for fresh water.

Most ancient or long standing towns are built on rivers and can claim our title as an accurate description.

From birth to death we each have within us a river of thoughts running continually. They start off very simply as a trickle of information and progress to a torrent in our childhood years, the focus shifts as we reach adulthood and we can decide to narrow it to a specific area or choose to continue to feed it widely. The most interesting people are those who remain inquisitive and seek after learning, some choose a singular subject while others remain open to varied disciplines.

My late teens and twenties were focussed in a very narrow way into Bible study, it was my chosen subject and I specialised in finding out as much as was possible to contain. The advent of the Internet opened up an even greater opportunity in my thirties and the information freely available was fantastic to a mind like mine.

A friendship with an older academic friend helped me to broaden that interest into world politics, history and the sciences, his was a love of chemistry specifically but all disciplines were of interest to him. Subsequent friendships broadened that desire to learn further and further and have greatly enhanced my mind in many ways.

The pollution problem began for me not with increases in subjects or interests, it did not come from movies or music or reading the books that I was advised to avoid. The pollution of my river came from within, not directly from sin or failure but from the weakness that was lying dormant all along.

I have looked into understanding the triggers in my short biographical introspection, (see link below) but the ensuing pollution has been, at times, absolute.

The toxicity of my own thinking is unsurpassed by anything anyone has ever said to me.

Like any environmental disaster it takes time to clear up a river. The encouraging thing for me today is that the river flows onward and takes away the thoughts of last week, for a time at least.

The weekend just past showed me that I can experience near normal function and enjoy good food and good company, there can still be laughter and celebration as the clean water flows through.

I have my own thoughts on true cleansing and its source but the reality is that it is not always as simple as some propound, nor even as I suggested in the past!

Nevertheless the hope is real. The potential for change and true healing exists, the river can yet flow clean even if now it is nothing more than a trickle.

A year without God: Technically a year without church

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017KLG8YI/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_awdl_zIHowb37CDEQ4