Day 2: Handbreaths

When it rains all the world seems a little smaller. 

A little more claustrophobic. 

Little. 

The world shrinks with each raindrop instead of each raindrop shrinking into puddles and oceans and rivers and soaked coats walking around.  And we all shy away from the streets and avoid the puddles like the Wicked Witch of the West melting.  We don’t enjoy a closet-sized world.

Maybe it’s because we are more apt to notice the world for what the world really is.  But what are we focusing on?

There’s a rose sitting on a windowsill.  Sitting like you and me.  Stem for feet bent into the waters like time spent out on a dock not wanting to dive straight in.  So we sit there.  Swinging feet back and forth, crossed, skimming the water’s surface, barely submerging our toes.  There’s always the shock of the water being too cold even on July’s hundred-degree days.  The world could boil over and we’d still shiver at the thought of diving straight into the pool.

In all her Mother Nature patience the rose waits there, on that old windowsill, for a little light to break from the heavens.  She never speaks.  She barely moves.  She simply remains half sunk in a bottle of water.  Her petals could be plucked but I’d still not know if I were in love or not.  Because I don’t think love relies on chance, but nevertheless love is a chance that we must all take at some point in our life.

“She loves me not.”  I don’t think that’s true, but I’ll pluck the rose petal anyways.  Because I’m wanting to get onto the “She loves me” bit.  So I must work through my indecision weighing the pros and cons.  And weighing them so quickly that the list doesn’t amount to much beside the shallow surface of all that I barely know she is.  Though what can my lack of knowledge bring?

“She loves me not.”

It only furthers my indecision.  Like I’ve come upon a brick wall blocking me from moving forward.  And that brick wall is an arm’s reach taller than me.  So I jump.  And I swing at the ledge.  Fingertips clasping a road-rash-capable surface.  Soon, sure enough, they’ll begin to bleed because I can’t hold myself up.  So I fall.  And the wall grows.  When I walk to the side it extends further.  It won’t allow me to see what’s on the other side. 

Love is my own Great Wall.  It runs for miles and miles and stretches higher than the heavens.  It doesn’t matter how much I struggle to see the other side.  I can’t. 

Even though I want to know her more, I can’t.  Phone lines don’t tell me her history.  They don’t let me watch her life in rewind, pause, playback again and start at the beginning.  I could call and I could call and I could call, but our conversations always start with “Hellos” like it’s the first time we met and end with “Goodbyes” like we’ll never meet again. 

Then I pluck another, and “She loves me.” 

But the wall is still two feet too high and three feet too wide.  I can’t see her.  I can’t know her.

But I can still love her?

Pluck another. Pluck once more.  And soon that rose wouldn’t be that rose in the old windowsill.  It would be a stem, a weed.  How can we possibly justify taking guesses for what love might bring?  How can we prune the edges of love by chance of “She loves me” or “She loves me not”? 

Love doesn’t make sense.  But one thing it does, is it waits.  It waits for that hole in the sky to appear.  For that light to filter through.  And luckily, that rose got placed on a windowsill where it can take in what little life it might know.  Breathe what stale air there might be with a window closed.  Too cold in February.  The wind is dictated by the swing of the front door.  Gusts pushed round the room upon entering.  But air, regardless.  So heart beats and breaths.  And petals on stems, in full bloom, breathing it all in.

Behold, you have made my days a few

            handbreaths...

(Psalm 39:5)

I breathe in the rain.  Breathe in the mix of fire chimney smoke, crackling inching embers nearing ends and warming houses along with whisps winds whispering gusting gaining speeds and showing storms in small amounts as though it were flexing.

The world is small when it rains.  So small that Creation’s details are as art in a gallery.  New exhibitions open.  No cover charge.  Just our natural tendency to understand the world a little better when all is boxed up a little more.  But that tendency always surprises us like it were a natural responsibility to be more intimately connected with Creation.

And it’s in moments like these, moments when I can’t help but notice a simple rose simply sitting on a windowsill, that I ask my God:

“O Lord, make me know my end

     and what is the measure of my days;

     let me know how fleeting I am!

Behold, you have made my days a few

            handbreaths,

     and my lifetime is as nothing before

you.

Surely all mankind stands as a mere

            breath!

(Psalm 39:4-5)

Because when the world is smaller I tend to be more introspective.

I pray that you evaluate your life.  That you see the beauty which may be sitting right behind you on a windowsill.  And know that love is a chance worth taking.

Then go for a walk in the rain.  And intimately enjoy the world around you. 

Breathe it all in. 

Repeat. 

Do it again.