Meditations Along The Chattahoochee

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Meditations Along The Chattahoochee River

Reed V. Tuckson, M.D.

Publication Date: September 9, 2026

I oﬀer this book as a spiritual seeker who has been privileged to have devoted almost fifty years to serving others as a physician. My professional and spiritual journeys have both been concerned with the larger purposes and transcendent values associated with whether we as human beings shall live or prematurely die, and the quality of that survival. I have come to understand, and be motivated by, the essential importance of the intimate and reciprocal relationship between societal healing and the physical, mental and spiritual healing of myself and other human beings.

If ever there was a time for societal healing, that time is now. With each new day, the news documents the unfortunate reality that we live in a world of overwhelming anger, boisterous hostility, and ever deeply entrenched tribal divisions. As a grandfather of two young adult boys, Marvin Gaye’s poignant lyric, “when I look at the world, it fills me with sorrow…children today will really suﬀer tomorrow” has been playing in my head, touching my soul and calling me to take more eﬀective action.

This book has become a personal calling and my own personal call to action. It arises out of my understanding that if we are to heal the society, we must first heal ourselves. The Christian monk Thomas Merton expresses this well:

“By healing the divisions in themselves they would help heal the divisions of the world. They would realize in themselves the unity which is at the same time the highest action and the purest rest, true knowledge and self-less love, a knowledge beyond knowledge in emptiness and unknowing; a willing beyond will in apparent non-activity. They would attain to the highest striving in the absence of striving and of contention.”

The stated themes and implied nuances expressed by Merton are the subject of many of the contemplations presented in this book. Regular first light visits to a section of the Chattahoochee River in Georgia have oﬀered me the peace and serenity necessary for meditative thought and visual imagination, uniting the deepest part of me within the pure expression of the awesomeness of Divine creativity. When I am fortunate, the experience is like a symphonic Love Supreme. At a minimum, I am always filled with a humbling and profound sense of gratitude, a gratitude that insists on expression, on seeing its own light of the day. Fortunately, I never come to the river without a camera and always with an open heart.

My time at the river has been invaluable in my own healing, in uniting my internal divisions and overcoming the debilitating distractions that plague all of us as human beings. In addition to the scenes I witness, I also experience the river as a connecting force for a wide assortment of fellow travelers who often share their own stories and who teach me that regardless of the external characteristics by which we choose to define people, regardless of the social divisions we contort ourselves into, at our core, at the level of who we truly are and were before we had these external bodies, we are, in our essence, ONE.

My great hope is that these images and meditations along the Chattahoochee River will inspire you to open your own heart wider, to take more time for serene contemplation and prayerful meditation, and to develop your own ritual of the daily expression of gratitude. If producing this book has taught me anything, it is the importance of having the courage to put your deepest feelings about the world you want to live in out into the world. If producing this book has taught me anything, it is the importance of rising above the pathogenic cynicism that blocks out the sun of love. If producing this book has taught me anything, it is to be unafraid of being in touch with your timeless true self, the you that is so intimately connected within the Oneness of all life.

As the poet Langston Hughes urges us, we should allow our souls to “grow deep like the river,” and maybe, just maybe, the sum total of all our best eﬀorts will bring about the loving, healthy, healing, unified world of our dreams.

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