Each morning after breakfast, I stack dishes on the kitchen counter and Finn enthusiastically pushes and pulls his step stool to the sink, calling out "dee-shes" over and over. He grabs his little cup and bowl from his cabinet and clambers up, excited to pour water back and forth, to rinse, to splash on his clothes. It's a sweet time, and not just because I'm successfully accomplishing a chore and entertaining my child. It's that the light is so uniformly lovely at that time of day, and because I have such a view of all the life going on around and below me.
There's the woman across the way who hangs up shirts to dry, and the woman a few floors below who waters her balcony full of plants each morning. There's the uniformed school boys lining up in St. John's courtyard, listening to a man exhorting them into proper behavior. I have no idea what he says, but the "lecture tone" comes through loud and clear. There are retirees filling the sportsground with tai chi and qi gong.
This morning there was the men's half of a wedding party spilling out of a highly decorated car, and then doing it over and over again as the videographer shot different angles. There are people walking briskly to work, and babies with grandmas who just amble along.
There's a temple next door to us, and though we can't see it, we frequently hear chants, rising up to our window and inviting us to pause for a second and pray along. I have no idea what these Buddhist monks say when they chant, or what they are thinking about or aiming for, but it never fails to remind me of that verse about our prayers rising as incense. There's plenty of incense lit at this temple too, and on feast days the smell reaches our window, twenty floors up. And though our prayers aren't so public or loud as the monks', I like the idea of them getting caught along the way, stopping in someone's kitchen window and nudging towards silence or towards thankfulness.
Hope you all have some morning light today, and something that nudges you towards prayer.
2 comments:
Thank you God,
For grown children who can still remind me that there is more to life than just finishing the “deeshes”. Thank you that there is a world beyond my window that is so enriching and interesting and that you pour your light over it all. Thank you for the opportunity to work for a company that makes it possible for me to connect with the community where I live -- both the rich and poor and the well-known and unknown.
You've just given us something kind of the opposite of window shopping... rather than looking into windows at things you covet, you're looking out of windows at things that just are, and painting them beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
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