October 1...

October 1. Today started with an alarm... ring ring ring...time for class I guess. A new month. Another day. Another chance to breath, another day to feel the penetrating sun on my skin, another day to know that despite the evil in this world, there is good, there is true and there is beautiful. I can see it in people I come into contact with every day. I can hear it in music, I can see it in the changing colors of the leaves…it’s written everywhere. God’s image. His fingerprints are everywhere! However sometimes I find it at the most unexpected times… maybe I should open my eyes more often?

Today I went on a bus ride for a printmaking assignment. Bus rides are not something new to me. I eagerly look forward to them just for the sheer knowledge of knowing I won’t know what to expect. Every time it’s different. This time I got to sit next to a face I see everyday in the cafeteria; a guy who works at Whitworth washing dishes for a living. He gets up early; buses to work and back home again. I think he has some sort of disability, I’m not exactly sure what, maybe a form of cerebral palsy…anyway he wouldn’t be one that people would normally just strike up a conversation with. However, we did start talking and I was amazed at what simple joys he took from everyday life. He’s not in a rush to get to the next thing, to climb the next step…he lives. EACH DAY. And he lives each day finding jewels in car jokes, playing electric guitar and washing dishes. His laugh is contagious and real. Jeff (dishwasher guys name) taught me about be thankful for each day, for being thankful for what I have. 

This little bus ride had three other interesting characters I met (on the way back) but it’s to late to write about them now. They too had the Fingerprints all over them…even if they knew it or not.

There are so many faces in this world, so many numbers. But today I was reminded that there are stories behind each one. Beautiful stories, sad stories, frightful stories, and lovely stories… how dare I see ‘just another face in the crowd’ sitting next to me…I am reminded of something C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory,

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare…There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal…But it’s immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendorous…next to the blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holies object presented to your senses.”

Jeff the dishwasher