Earlier this evening I was sitting out on the front porch. Actually, it's a stoop, but it's big enough for two chairs. After a long, intense week at work, I was exhausted, so I just wanted to sit and read, get my mind off of the complexities of life and death and the absurdity and meanness of the current election. Something made me look up, and in that moment, I realized the world... had come alive. The air was so still I could hear kids and adults laughing and talking as they painted a garage two blocks away. I watched a group of birds chatting and giggling (I swear!) at the edge of the neighbor's driveway, delighting in the sprays of the sprinkler and no doubt gossiping about the latest antics of the woman next door. I heard a pickup truck pull up at the house on the corner opposite ours, and a father got out, obviously tired like me from a long week's work. He still wore his work clothes; a navy blue short-sleeve shirt and navy blue pants, dirty and worn from both work and laundry. His cap had a logo on it that I couldn't read, and his shirt bore his name, but that, too, was too far for me to read. He was speaking to someone in the truck and soon a boy half his size slid off the bench seat onto the street and fell into his father's embrace. They stood there by the truck, door still open, hugging in the dusk. Then suddenly as if they'd woken from a dream, they parted and Dad grabbed a football out of the cab and they began a game of catch in front of the house.
I heard a swish of leaves and saw a rabbit hop across the lawn as if to get my attention. He did. Then he stopped suddenly as if caught in the act, standing inanimately still, as if not even breathing, yet his twitching nose would not be tamed. He stared at me as if to make himself invisible by his stillness. I went back to my book. Several minutes later, I looked up. He hadn't moved, still statuesque in the shadow of the big oak tree, nose twitching nervously. I smiled. Minutes later, I snuck a peek, to find him on the other side of the tree, suddenly frozen again in place as if we were playing a game of Freeze Tag. I watched him. I tried to hold his gaze, but he won the game, I looked away first. Down the street I saw one of the elderly Hispanic sisters in the neighborhood heading north, and her sister coming down the other street heading east, oblivious to each other and hidden by the houses on the block. As they each rounded the same corner, one of them threw up her hands in surprised delight, laughing and reaching out to embrace her sibling. I chuckled, feeling a bit sneaky having seen it coming ahead of time. This joyful, spontaneous reunion. Grace.
It's Friday night. I sat at the bedside of two different men this week who were dying on hospice, both so strong and stubborn that though their spirits were willing to go, their hearts were too strong to give up the fight just yet. Family kept vigil, hour after hour, day and night, waiting. Keeping watch with such ferocious love it transcended all the dysfunctional relationships they normally shared. They were brave. All of them. Nurses fed them with cookies and coffee. A daughter swabbed her father's lips with a tiny sponge on a stick. A sister described all the glories of that unseen, unknown heaven, coaxing her brother to go and claim the prize, to no avail. I held the hands of the dying; strong, farmer hands. Once calloused and dirty from daily hard work. Love everywhere. Not perfect, not pretty all the time. But love nonetheless.
My heart aches for this world, this world behind what we see. The mystery, the power and beauty. So much noise, so loud, so chaotic sometimes it makes me crazy. And then I look. And see. The real world. The real behind the false and the empty and the stupid. The Good. It's there.
And it's beautiful.
