Joyful moment

Sometimes our awareness of the world unclouds for a swift and fleeting moment, and for just that instant, you can feel the amazing gift of your own life. I love these joyful moments, and I try to hold onto the memory of each one when they come.


You must know what I mean--you are toodling along through your life, doing something very ordinary, when something strikes you as particularly poignant. And for that brief moment, you realize how full and beautiful and perfect life is, just as it is in that space of time. If I am lucky, I can hold that feeling for a few minutes--and then it's back to the routine perceptions of everyday life.

One morning last week I was hit by that feeling again while washing the breakfast dishes. The air was late-summer cool, and filled with lazy cricketsongs, and it flowed in the window near the sink. I turned on the faucet, watched the soap bubbles and steamy air as it floated around my face, and suddenly I was profoundly happy. While washing dishes.

Call it an epiphany, call it a brief rapture, call it crazy. But as mundane as life can be, it is a blessing just to be. In fact, mundane itself is a blessing. I am grateful for the slow times, my uneventful seasons, my simple routines. It is a fortune indeed to have dishes to wash, a sink to wash them in, and senses to notice the tiny beauties that surround the most basic of days.

May we all have these moments, shimmering, delicate, and fleeting as soap bubbles.