The River Wild

by Denis O'Neill

  Gail peered at him, astonished. “No way.”

  “I could see them from my side of the river. They were so beautiful. They shimmied and danced and filled me up with faith and humility and a contentment I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. They made me feel like I was part of something bigger than me, yet that embraced me. Isn’t that what religion’s supposed to do?”

  “That’s my understanding,” Gail said.

  Tom looked at her. “I think I joined your church last night.”

  Gail beamed. There was so much to say she knew to be true: that recognizing you were no more important in the scheme of things than a whitefish, or a leaf, or a river rock, was the most liberating thing—to acknowledge your insignificance, which in turn, empowered you as a part of a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Yet none of it was written down. There was no big book. No hocus pocus or hallowed days. Holy water, maybe. But you understood it by living it, by being part of it.

  “Yeah,” she confessed at the river’s edge, “I like where they pass the collection plate.”