You ride a raft of life. You balance it with your feet and a stick. You ride the river. What a noble adventure you are on. You ride the rapids, or you float in a still pool. Where the river of life will take you tomorrow, you will find out. You are an explorer in life, and yet you follow the river where it takes you.

You forage in life, beloveds. You are on a shopping expedition. What the store of the world holds for you, you will see when you get there.

A map of life is not life itself. A route does not follow a map. A map tries to follow the route. There may be detours and turns that the map could not take into account, or the curves in the road that once were are no longer. No map is up-to-date.

There will be windfalls, and there will be stones, and both are impartial. There is nothing for you to take personally, not all the gold, nor tea, nor the hot coals, nor the glaciers. In all cases, you are meeting life. Life bolsters you, and it slips and slides. Whatever shores you pass, life is serving itself up to you.

Accept what comes your way, and then keep following the river.

The river you ultimately follow is My heart. And that is where you pull up as well. Where My heart is is Heaven. And you are in My heart. What is all the fuss about?

We sail together. The ship I sail does not flounder except in your mind. My heart cannot be overturned. You come from My heart, and you wind up in My heart. Heaven is not static. You breathe life into it, beloveds. You partake of Heaven right now. We travel together. Upstream or downstream, We engage in this voyage. It is really an excuse for Us to come to know each other as if We came from a distance. All of this relative life is an As If. It is written on sand with a stick or it is written in the winds. Soon enough it fades, and you enter full-blown into where there is no fading.

In the center of the Sun, there is bright light and no fading at all. This is where We are indelibly seen for the love that We are. Here We are trapped in love, so to speak, but there is nothing but love, so then it is more truthful to say We are freed in love. Our hearts are prisoners of love in a vast land without rim, a borderless realm of the beating heart, pulsating love, love upon love, upbeat in love, breathing love, swimming in it, drowning in it, swooning in it, building castles of love in an ever-increasing whirlpool of love.

Love is the starting place, and there is no departure from it. There is nowhere to go from love. Love would swallow you and perform wonders upon you, and yet it can do nothing at all with you but have you wallow in it, soak it up, absorb it, paddle in it, splash in it, make big waves. The universe roars in love, and yet, on Earth, love may not be heard. Something else may be heard instead, seem to be heard instead when, actually, there is nothing to make of love but more love, love making way for love, love adorning itself, love heaped up upon itself, love presenting itself as love and nothing but love, love a stand-out in a crowd of love, love amassed, and love given, love sharing the mountain of itself, the ocean of itself and the valley in between. Why, beloveds, you are the valley and mountains of love I hold in My hand, My heart, and My breath.