A Day of Blessings
The day is full of blessings.
In downtown SmallTown, NC I am camped out in a tiny shop, copyediting a book for a Friday deadline. An obese, ungainly man cradles himself next to me and I notice that he is reading the Bible. Our eyes meet and his ask if I am willing to share the sofa. My eyes reply yes, though we exchange no words. For a while, we read together silently.
“Are you studying?” he asks, lifting his chin from the book. One eye wavers left of center, the other is focused on my face.
“Sort of. Actually, just doing work. I’m proofreading,” I say.
It’s a sliver of a moment but inside its narrowness I see my heart harden a bit and feel ashamed. I know that if this man were my age and handsome, that I might speak to him more. I would like to ask him which verse he is reading or see if he might offer a quote for the day – but I feel myself close to him because I see little kinship between us in physicality. I am not zapped by any common energy though I wish I were. Then again, maybe I am too hard on myself. I do have eighty more pages to read, after all, and I’m pushing deadline. I need to focus. My ego-driven interior monologue continues until it is interrupted by his weight shifting on the couch. He garumphs up from the cushions and motions for me to move my legs so that he may leave.
“Well, God loves you, you know. Have a good day,” he says, smiling at me.
I look up from the manuscript in my hands. “Thank you.” I smile back at him. “You have a nice day too.”
Later, in line for lunch at the craft school, a tall, black man who is visiting campus from the NC Arts Council is behind me in line. His eyes are soft and honey-glazed, and lure me in. He must be almost seven feet tall, as his lower rib cage only starts at about my eye level. I crane my neck up to hold his eyes in place and say, “Welcome to the Craft School.” My smile is as wide as the ocean because of the instant warmth in his demeanor.
“Thank you, I’m glad to be here.” His voice is sonorous, stretching like a bow across cello strings.
“How are you?” I ask as we scoot further down the lunch line together.
“I’m blessed,” he says. “I’m blessed.”
And so it is, that two angels make their love of humankind and the world known to me in one day’s time. And so it is that the little things in life slowly start to seep back in and I begin to feel clicks like the advance of camera film throughout my day. And so it is, that I feel blessed and loved, and then some.
