The river has thawed. Not dramatically, as it did last year, throwing its multi-layered icebergs up onto the islands like a train wreck, but methodically, melting, from the banks inward. There is now plenty of free water flowing downriver. The little island we call Brigadoon is earning its name, almost wholly submerged. The reflected arch of the bridge has reappeared; I love the perfect symmetry of the green structure and its twin image shining on the dark river. Color has returned, with spring.

My first trip across the footbridge, since winter settled in, was like visiting a new world. Bamboo is piled up on the island in a primitive shelter, maybe an otter’s den. Natural debris is strewn all over, from whole trees to matchsticks. The island has the rank smell of dried fish, but it’s a smell I welcome after months of the sensory deprivation of winter. The river thrills me with its vigor. I lean over to touch it with a piece of bamboo, just to feel its thrust. This is my faith, I think. This river is what I believe in.

It’s an heretical thought, this time of year, I suppose. I have been dancing around my concept of faith for a while now. Moving to a new locale means moving to a new place of worship, if you are so inclined. It has never been much of a challenge to me, being raised Unitarian, but then, I have had the comfort of an established city church for so long. Lately I find that change, and age, put new demands on my expression of faith.

My earliest memories include the feeling of being overwhelmed in my grandmother’s Catholic church in Pittsburgh. “When will it end?” was my only thought then, sitting next to her on the hard pew. I knew enough to know I had not been properly trained in what to do or say. I knew enough to be ashamed. I could not have been more than three or four years old.

Later, at the various wakes of family members, I honed my skills. “I may be a Unitarian,” I thought, “but I will not be humiliated.” I learned my “Hail, Mary’s” at Aunt Rose’s knee, praying with her over the body of my Uncle Bill. My big, beautiful red-haired uncle, who collapsed into an unrecognizable frailty from cancer, until he was so bald and thin and pale, it was painful to look at him. I was happy to have those words then; they bonded me to another part of my family, and gave me a purpose. I was helping Uncle Bill ascend to heaven, I believed.

The other part of my family was the faithful; we were the heathens. They were solid Catholics who did not appear to question issues of faith, and saved their opinions for politics and social issues. They seemed completely at ease with their religious beliefs. My mother had raised us as Unitarians to give us a spiritual connection to a more forgiving deity than she was raised under. Meanwhile, my image of God was a scary man in black robes, with dark unyielding eyes. I was surprised to hear, years later, that my mother pictured God as a gentle, white-robed man with a perpetual smile. She was the lapsed Catholic; I was the Unitarian!

Services at St. Hilda’s & St Hugh’s school were a daily rigor. On Thursdays we took communion, and I share the memory with parochial school girls everywhere of feeling faint from hunger as we kneeled through the lengthy recitation of prayer by Reverend Mother, who was only slightly less scary to me than God, Himself.

These experiences are all about our expressions of faith; faith itself is more elusive. When you have it, it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus or the river. It carries you through, makes sense of the senseless, lightens the load. My grandfather had it; my brother, too. Though I struggle with my expression, trying this church or that fellowship, my faith is with the force that guides the river, and that is greater than all of us.