Last week, a visiting North American asked me how I “deal” with the water situation here in Nueva Suyapa. What he was referring to is the fact that for the past year I’ve been living in a house with no running water. I clumsily tried to explain that, strangely enough, I‘ve come to enjoy the moments when I fill a large pot with water from one of the water storage containers in the house and heat it on the stove for a toasty bucket shower.
A few reasons:
First, I come to value water differently. You don’t just talk about water being a scarce resource, you live it because the precious stuff only comes to your house 3 times a month. Also, it brings a very simple but overlooked truth to mind: water does not come from a faucet. I know. But I think I can begin to forget where things come from sometimes: food, gas, paper, jewelry, clothes, love ( O.K. I will make a different point about the last one in a bit) all seem to appear at store for our convenience. Love doesn’t appear out of no where a wonderful gift that just happens. Many times it’s gritty, hard work. Um… now pausing to think, I think the reason why I make this point will require a whole other blog entry. : )
But even though it’s been a great spiritual exercise in remembering my role of steward of God’s earth, doing this otherwise ordinary chore is also quite lovely maybe because there can be beauty to ordinary things that just remind us that we are alive and that its no small miracle that we woke up this morning and lived to pour another bucket of water over ourselves. Maybe it’s in the most ordinary things that I am reminded of the most extraordinary of gifts.
They told me that I live in “the trenches” but what if I don’t see it that way? What if I am learning to live to enjoy the quiet and ordinary things just for what they are? And maybe we don’t have to be without running water to continuously be in awe of God and his world.
Note: I don’t want to romanticize poverty. Sure sounds like I am, huh? It’s not beautiful if you don’t’ have running water because of inefficient board of directors or not have a good public road because of corrupt officials. Righteous anger ( and doing justice :0 ) is an ethical response to injustice, but God wants us to live in hope not in gloom and grumbling. So I think we are called to enjoy life even when there are limitations because maybe we’ll discover that these supposed limitations are actually liberating us. A life in Christ transforms how we see everything. But we sometimes allow these limitations in life to actually bind us to a different pace of life where we take things for granted, are disconnected with the living, breathing, dying, and rejuvenating world, and don’t pause and slowly, but deliberately breath in and become very conscious of the steam escaping from the pot, brimming with water.
Friends, please do read and enjoy this poem. It inspired me to write this entry--big surprise.
The Patience of Ordinary Things
By Pat Schneider
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
Love, Love, and more Love,
-grace
