It Starts with a Trickle

July 2018--The Mississippi Headwaters

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to be at the Mississippi Headwaters with my family. I've been there a number of times, the first time when I was just 9 years old. And all that time, I've always known this was the start of the Mississippi, the same river we cross in the Twin Cities on a daily basis. So this year it surprised me a little when I had a new experience of it.

While some of the family was walking in the water up to the first foot bridge and other family were watching the stuff, I had the opportunity to walk alongside the river on my own. That's when it hit me...if you didn't know any better, you'd just call this a creek. It's so little, you might not even give it that much credit. At very beginning it's just a trickle of water over the rocks in the corner of Lake Itasca, shallow enough for my 3-year-old granddaughter to wade in it. By the foot bridge, it is still only knee or thigh high. It's a very small movement. It's almost nothing and yet it isn't.

I thought how the Mississippi is one of the major life forces of this country, bringing life and energy to both people and animals. It's the reason people came and built towns and cities. It's part of the reason this part of the world became farmland. For centuries, that water has found its way from northern Minnesota all the way to the gulf carrying nutrients and water and people and animals along with it.

And that's when this idea hit me: every major movement starts with a trickle. We don't know at the beginning how far it will move us. We may never know how the kindness we do today grows and moves as it travels from one person to another. Pete and I have had the opportunity to cross the Mississippi River at many points from the innocent beginning to the Gulf of Mexico. It travels a long way, through many different ecosystems, towns and cities.

What if the love we share today is the trickle that will bring hope and life down river? What if it's not hopeless or pointless to keep on trying? The trickle takes awhile to build momentum but mile after mile, day after day, it gathers more energy and speed and life as other water ways join it.

So, I'm wondering, how will I offer some kindness, some love, some peace, some understanding today? It only needs to be a trickle.