Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only €10,99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The River of Goodness
    The River of Goodness
    The River of Goodness
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    The River of Goodness

    By David Marquis

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The River of Goodness is a lyrical, global exploration of the ways we can create a more just and sustainable world for all, from the author of The River Always Wins and I Am a Teacher

    Every day, posits Marquis, every single human has to make a choice: accept the world the way it is or work to make it better. Each of us can pursue the work of goodness in many ways. The River of Goodness, the second volume in Marquis’s River Trilogy, provides real-world examples of people who have taken on the work of goodness, whether through thankless tasks or in dangerous and challenging circumstances.

    This follow-up to Marquis’s beloved first volume, The River Always Wins, argues that making the world better is rooted in the hard daily work of creating change that lasts.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLa Reunion Publishing
    Release dateJul 16, 2024
    ISBN9781646053285
    The River of Goodness

    Related to The River of Goodness

    Related ebooks

    Nature For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for The River of Goodness

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The River of Goodness - David Marquis

      1

      Every Morning of the World

      Come down now to the river.

      Come down to the water, the surging strong water of the river moving always onward toward the Greater Water. The shimmering liquid dances in the sun, shines and knows it is worthy and moves, the drops traveling together, the moving on an eternal swirl from the headwaters through the watershed along its self-chiseled course, finding a way, going where the river can and will and must.

      Come down now and sit, find a place along the bank, sit in the soft grass just past the reeds and the rushes, and watch the drops dance and shimmer and flow.

      You have come on a much-needed day off, your life frazzled to the edge of your last synapse, your spirit and your body worn by the pull of the world with its incessant, blue-light screens and bombardment of images and ads and pulsing sound. You rose up today and said ENOUGH and did the one thing you knew you needed. You headed into nature because you knew without needing to be told by advanced analytics that being in nature is good for you. You knew this in your very bones.

      And you brought a lunch, a simple sandwich and an apple and a bag of Fritos and a little thermos of homemade coffee. But as you bite into that apple and reach for the sandwich in your daypack, a glint, a bounce of sharp light, strikes you in both your eyes, so bright that you look away.

      But you look back because you wonder what could bob along that peaceful stretch of fine water that could throw off such glare, the sun in the sky at such an angle and the shade from the trees along the bank making such a disturbance seem unlikely.

      What on earth, you wonder, could be so troublesome?

      And then you see it bobbing along, the sparkling, coalesced drops simply going their way.

      A plastic bottle, an empty water bottle, floating along as though it belongs there, cruising like it’s out for a Sunday drive.

      It’s still upstream a bit as you take another bite of your apple.

      It’s close to the riverbank. You could get it.

      All you did was come here to enjoy your apple and your sandwich, and some fool way far up the river went and threw an empty plastic bottle out of the car window, or just dropped it in a parking lot, and then the rains came and washed it into the storm sewers, and it washed down a creek into the river and now here it comes, throwing hard light into your eyes.

      The bottle—wretched thou art, o flotsam and jetsam—bobs close to the river’s edge.

      You could get it, could definitely get it, but it’s so peaceful there with your apple and your sandwich and your chips, and besides, this is your day off, and the sun is just right, not too hot, and, oh, all right, for God’s sake. You decide to get the bottle.

      You stand up and step down to the riverbank, your apple still in one hand, and you reach out with your other, teetering ever so carefully as you bend and stretch, but you didn’t count on that big rock, the one where you just put your foot, being so slick, and in you go, headfirst, plunk and splash.

      You come up sputtering and spitting and wiping your face and catching your breath—oh, that water’s cold!—suddenly realizing your apple is gone. It was a Golden Delicious! Your favorite! And organic! Dejected, exasperated, and altogether ticked off, you prepare to slog your way back to the shore when into your eye comes a glint of light, a wink, really, from downstream.

      It is the bottle, the plastic bottle, and it mocks you, safe now from your grasping hands. It is bobbing along, enjoying the ride.

      All you were trying to do was clean the river, do your part, your good deed for the day, simply remove one plastic bottle from the river.

      You weren’t trying to change the world. It was just one bottle.

      Welcome, fellow humans of all persuasions and colors, all creeds and kinds, believers and non-believers alike! Welcome all!

      Welcome to the River of Goodness.

      Nobody said it was going to be easy.

      Yet there you are, your Golden Delicious apple likely gone to feed a critter that will find it among the reeds somewhere along the bank that night. Then you glance to the riverbank where a raccoon has found your daypack and is eating your sandwich and thoroughly enjoying your Fritos. Insult to injury.

      You blow out a breath and prepare to climb up out of the river when you notice trash snagged on a low-hanging branch and beneath it a tire submerged in the muck, its tread protruding just enough to make you notice it. But you came for a simple lunch on a day off, a little relaxation and sunshine, and now you are waist deep in it and suddenly realize that the bottle—yes, that one sorry bottle—had purpose.

      It intended, as much as an inanimate object can express a sense of purpose, to get you into the river, to get you good and wet, to immerse you, to bring you full on into the water, the same stuff we are all made from.

      And there it is, there is the terrible sweet irony of it.

      We are made of water, and those plastic bottles now clogging the planet contain the clear liquid that replenishes us. Whoever emptied and tossed that offending bottle simply wanted to quench their thirst.

      And now, the global quenching of eight billion thirsty human beings has overwhelmed us, and that one bottle in an otherwise pristine body of water caught your attention because you knew it didn’t belong there. The river was fine until you saw that, and your day was fine until you saw it. And now you are in the river, and you have seen the trash caught in the tree limbs and the offending tire, no doubt illegally dumped at night.

      There is no new water, but there is more clean water available to more people than at any time in human history, yet we choose instead

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1