Gospel of Karin

I no longer recall why the train stopped. Mechanical failure? Track maintenance? In any case, it did, for a good forty-five minutes one warm spring evening about two years ago.

I was traveling home from class at Boston University on one of Boston’s “T” commuter rails. There were just a few passengers remaining in the train car, all of us, as usual, keeping to ourselves: reading, sleeping, emailing.

Over the loud speaker came a voice telling us that the train was experiencing a brief delay, and that we’d be on our way as soon as possible. A good fifteen minutes passed until people began to noticeably squirm in their seats.

A soft breeze drifted through the car. The train’s outside doors were open, and someone had pulled back the sliding doors in the compartment to free the stifling air. Soon, people began looking upward as if anticipating that the voice might come back at any minute to break the silence as well as the stop, which for we frenzied commuters, was already beginning to feel interminable.

It’s not as though we were running out of things to do. Personally, I was so overloaded with assigned readings that I could have stayed on that train for days without finishing my work. Yet, here we all were, suddenly disconnected from our routines and suspended in time.

We gradually began to make eye contact as if each of us was searching for an anchor. And then there were the shoulder shrugs, the half smiles, and finally circumspect laugher as we began to engage in small talk, dipping our toes into the proverbial water.

Those farther back in the train began to move forward. We turned our bodies toward each other. What could possibly be going on? Wasn’t this so typical of the T? Geez, we may be here forever! Then we were exchanging names, talking about our day, where we lived and worked, and who was waiting for us at home.

The smiles were now full, and I began to feel surprisingly happy that the train had stopped for a reason I can no longer recall.

So many people encounter the sacred in the world. I’ve read statements by the staunchest of rationalists about how the universe fills them with a sense of awe and wonder.

Often, however, it’s these same people who either deny the “reality” of these experiences or simply brush them aside as unimportant in light of the “brute” facts of life (what “brute fact” means is a topic for future discussion).

I thought of this one night after, of all things, a trip to the grocery store. As I walked to my car, wind gusts blew bits of litter across the pavement and shook the branches of trees. A storm was brewing.

While driving home, the heaviness of the rain clouds was both beautiful and a bit frightening. They seemed especially ominous because they were juxtaposed with clear sky in the distance.

It occurred to me that, even though I knew there was a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, that there was no exasperated storm god planning to bring a flood down on humanity, the spiritual experience of it was irreducible. The presence of divinity transcended and made sacred the simple observation.

This dimension of life is as much part of reality as seeing the storm in a very basic sense. It informs the way I see. I can see “just” a storm, or I can see the beauty, grace, and divinity that conveys itself during the encounter.1

Notes
1. I consider this an I-Thou experience wherein God’s eternity is glimpsed in the between of the encounter. See my earlier essay on I-Thou relating for more.

Painting: “Rainstorm off the Coast at Brighton,” John Constable. Courtesy Mark Harden’s Artchive, www.artchive.com.

Here in the Northeast, we’ve been pounded with several feet of snow over the past three days. My partner and I have a very small home on a tiny lot, and we’re quickly running out of room to put the stuff. He and I were out a few times today, huffing and puffing, often pausing to scan the yard for any nook and cranny that might be amenable to just one more shovel full, struggling to fling it ever higher atop the heaping piles of snow.

I caught myself starting to grouse under my breath. My arms hurt. My hands were cold. But then I remembered my father and his old pickup truck and plow. It was celery green. Big as a battleship. My brother once told me how, back in the early 80s, he used to ride around with dad during snow storms as he plowed out driveways at no charge, just for the fun of it. And I could picture my father, smile plastered across his face, Pall Mall dangling out one side of his mouth, shoving that snow into mountains, and yelling at my brother over the rumble of the giant engine “The old man’s pretty good, huh?”

And then I thought of a time years later when he broke his wrist shoveling. The truck was gone. It was expensive. He was sick with bone cancer, pretty far into it by then. He shouldn’t have been out there, but perhaps it never occurred to him that there was no reason he shouldn’t. He was doing what he’d always done, what most of us do when the snow falls, and the mess must be dealt with. We clean it up because that’s what we do and we’ll do it again next storm, next winter, next year. And maybe we complain a little. It’s tradition. I like it.

Today I moved the snow as always after a storm. My wrist did not break. My bones did not hurt. With luck I have a few more storms left in me. I paused for a breath then lifted the shovel a little higher.

My sweetheart left his coffee cup in the microwave this morning. This is not unusual. He has a funny habit of leaving it in different places around the house, then forgetting where he put it.

Often, he comes into the kitchen, refills his cup, nukes it, then leaves the room. Hours later, it’s still in the microwave. It was particularly poignant this morning because he had just left for a trip. When I found the cup half filled (half, never full — another idiosyncrasy) with stone-cold coffee, I was reminded of how much I love him. These little goofy things make him him. They and he make me very happy.

I went to the dentist today and a remarkable thing happened: my teeth went with me. I was relieved to discover them in my mouth when I arrived at the dentist because, given how little my former insurance company covered for dental care, I had begun to think my teeth were quite independent of me. And, following my insurer’s lead, it also seemed that I didn’t need my teeth either. So there. I can gum my food. People have done it for centuries.

So why was it then, that I was paying $300 per month for medical and dental when my insurance company would pay only a fraction of the cost for restorative dental work? Good question. I dumped the plan, and today, went to a dental school in Boston to see if they could offer me a reduced price on a crown. Sure, they may screw up and extract the tooth instead, but at least I’ll have further proof that my teeth are actually affixed to my body and that I need them more than they need me.