I’ve been getting religious about starting my day with twenty minutes in the hot tub ‘cause these here bones are getting creaky. I’ve self-prescribed this routine, an early-morning soak, as self-care and a bubbly PT session for my ever-stiffening muscles. Maybe I’ve heeded too much of Hunter S. Thompson’s advice to squeeze as much juice out of this lemon. * Or I could bemoan that I’m old, or I could be thankful I’ve had many mornings.
Yesterday, as I sat in the corner of the jacuzzi with my sunglasses on, I turned my face toward the light like a cat in a patch of sun. For whatever reason, I lifted the bottom of my glasses and had to quickly drop them back onto the bridge of my nose: It wasn’t a normal squinting, sun-in-my-eyes moment that left my peripheral vision intact. No, when I lifted my glasses, the light flooded in so intensely that all I could see in that millisecond was an all-consuming, overwhelming, pure, blinding white, like a brilliant blank canvas with no edges or end, like an infinity pool.
I instantly wondered whether this was an infinitesimal glimpse of what it would be like to see God.
A few minutes later, as the sun is wont to do, it shifted. Curious, I lifted my glasses, and my peripheral vision returned. The bright rays of the sun still made me squint, but the blinding, intolerable white light of the “infinity pool” had softened to something more bearable—but I still needed my shades.
Five minutes or so had passed, and I lifted my glasses again. The sun had shifted enough that my eyes needed no protection, so I set my sunglasses on the pool deck. This time, sunlight filtered through the dancing steam. An ethereal showcase—and I had a free, front-row seat. The ascending smoke on the water moved and morphed, swirling, twirling, spinning, licking, curling, birthing delicate, translucent dancers, double helices, billowy clouds, and tornadoes. One moment, an itty-bitty ballerina from my childhood jewelry box, and then a crescendo into a full-stage, grand production of Swan Lake. Back and forth, creative, unpredictable, dazzling, dramatic F-5 twisters, and then the performance would subside into a single, tiny dancer again, and back again to extravagance. Like watching the lapping flames in a fire pit, it was mesmerizing. (The photo doesn’t begin to do justice.)
The plumes were poetry in motion.
I wondered whether this was an infinitesimal glimpse of the Spirit.
Now, I shifted. I turned so I could hit the other side of my body with the spa jet. With my back to the sunlight, I could no longer see the ballet.
But I knew it was there.
I’m reading through the Old Testament, and I’m in the Psalms. This morning’s reading was Psalm 67:
“May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine upon us.”
This Psalm is my prayer for you, and maybe with a little Hunter S. Thompson thrown in:
*Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow! What a Ride!”—Hunter S. Thompson