There is a River —

And "it flows through the valleys and the mountains of our lives."

Sung by Roberta Flack, that song touches my soul.

When I am truly weary, discouraged or angry or fearful, those words make all the difference to me.  They tell me that there is a power greater than myself, an energy in which my soul can rest.

Then I remember Maya Angelou's poem "On the Pulse of the Morning," with the river singing:

"I call you to my riverside if you will study war no more.... Plant yourself beside me.

"Each of you, descendant of some passed-on traveler, has been paid for.... You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...you, the Ashanti, the Yoruba...bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare praying for a dream.

"Your passage has been paid....

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

Our passages have been paid?  Are our debts to history forgiven?  Together may we create this coming year as Jubilee?

Langston Hughes wrote that "The negro speaks of rivers...ancient dusky rivers.... My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

There is a river, wrote the historian Vincent Harding, and it is about the struggle for freedom in America.  I go down to the river to pray, where the waters may wash me clean. Shall we gather at the river?