Daylighting Courage Creek
Photo Credit: Chris Townley | Taos, NM
Dr. Chris Townley has been a trusted friend, accomplice, colleague, and pastor for almost two decades, faithfully engaging in the good and challenging work of justice and community building. He is a gifted writer and in 2024 completed his dissertation, A Trinitarian Vision for Shared Leadership: Embracing Hospitality as a Transformative Pathway, which will soon be published as a book! We are honored to count him among our dearest friends and to have him serve on our Board of Advisors for BLK South. Learn More
“There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action.” — Howard Thurman
You might find this hard to believe but some people over the centuries, in a practice that continues to this day, support the concept of covering up rivers, streams, and creeks so they cannot be seen or heard. The most common reason in history for such a practice is in pursuit of development. Let humans build upon the waters, they dream.
This is not what Howard Thurman was alluding to when he wrote in his book, Mediations of the Heart, about “inward springs” and “underground rivers.”
Thurman was a disciple of a place I’d like to call, Courage Creek, but he writes extensively about his life in the wilderness of Florida where he grew up and all the places he called home along the way. When I attempt to harness the life and wisdom of Thurman, I like to visit him on the banks of Courage Creek.
Courage Creek could be anywhere, and it is, and when you find it, you will know.
There is a creek in the forests near where I live that has, over the years, been beaten up by our misuse of watersheds and yet, as communities and activists and conservationists rally together, has grown to rise again. A month ago I arrived at this creek and found myself free of humans for thousands of acres in each direction. As I walked her banks and thought of Howard Thurman I wished I could have pulled this quote to the surface of the flowing stream with the ease in which I teased a trout to take a fly on the end of my fly rod. But perhaps these meditations of Thurman ripple in my bloodstream for how many times I’ve injected his meditations into my living flow.
Ambling creekside with the spirit of Thurman close by, I imagined what it might look like for those of us who seek justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly. And I imagined a community of activists and conservationists daylighting the “inward spring of confidence” and “courage” so, as Thurman states, we might “keep alive a thousand little springs of action.”
First, let me tell you about “daylighting” streams and then, let me tell you about a river that is alive.
Photo Credit: Chris Townley | Taos, NM
Daylighting streams and rivers is, as Robert Macfarlane writes, “the practice of un-burying the watercourses over which cities have been built, and which have been confined to drains and tunnels, flowing invisibly down in darkness.” Macfarlane notes that the times daylighting has taken place, communities and creatures begin to flourish anew. And in case I’ve overcomplicated the metaphor, which I am prone to do, I hold out a shred of hope that the justice seeking souls walking this planet (which I’m assuming is you) will continue to flow free in the light of day. Which is to say, if the springs of action are prone to being buried by the money-grubbing powers that be, then we best get about busting open roadways and dismantling towers of power that have sought to cover up our Courage Creeks of the world.
Second, there is a notion present in the “Rights of Nature” movement that claims rivers have rights and to that, Macfarlane wrote a book asking the question: Is A River Alive? A question worth revisiting but this is not about that as much as it is about this:
If the “underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience” is not flowing in the direction of action, which Thurman would probably say means action in the form of joining the work of liberating any who have their backs against the wall, then is our underground river really alive? Is it the action of those springs beneath the surface that “daylights” the justice, mercy, and humility needed to help the community of creation thrive together?
There are many systemic reasons that actual waterways and the metaphorical ones I’m riffing about our buried. We know them and if you showed up to read this reflection, I’ll assume you probably even know more about such unjust systems than I do. However, what I’m getting at is this:
Will we join two movements?
Will we work to unbury the lifeflow in us, and others, that the unjust weight of this world has sought to bury?
Will we come together as a community of activists and conservationists to maintain the free-flowing, life-giving spirit of those who make their way along my made up stream: Courage Creek?
I believe in us. Take note of the many meaningful projects flowing from the incarnational nurturing of BLK South and their friends.
May the quiet courage of BLK South and all we impact continue to keep alive a thousand little springs of action.
