The Throne...of Grace?

A few weeks ago, my toilet broke and started running continuously. Fortunately, the landlord was able to come quickly to "fix it." It is now working "fine" except that it requires that you hold the lever down until it has completely finished flushing. Or it will stop dead when you release the lever and not flush at all.

I am slowly getting used to the fact that I have to stop every time I flush the toilet and stand there long enough for the toilet to flush fully before I move on. In reality, this is such a small thing. But in a life in which I am moving far too fast for it to be healthy too much of the time, it feels like in the time I'm standing doing nothing I could have washed my hands, brushed my teeth, and quite possibly also fixed my hair.

But one can encounter God in even the most mundane of situations (Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century mystic whom I adore right now, writes, "A man walks upright, and the food in his body is shut in as if in a well-made purse. When the time of his necessity comes, the purse is opened and then shut again, in most seemly fashion. And it is God who does this...for he does not despise what he has made, nor does he disdain to serve us in the simplest natural functions of our body." I am apparently not alone in finding spiritual insight in the bathroom...).

Flushing my toilet, oddly enough, has become an invitation to slow down, to stop and breathe and notice God's presence in the middle of the mundane moments of my daily life. It is an invitation to stop going at breakneck speed, at full-tilt, and to realize that the world manages to keep turning just fine while I stand there doing nothing more meaningful than holding down the lever on my toilet. It is a reminder to check my pace, and not to return to a life that is lived at maximum speed all of the time, a reminder that sometimes the right thing to do is simply to slow down.

Some days I'm tempted to call the landlord again and see if there isn't a more satisfactory long-term solution to my toilet woes. But then I realize that I need this reminder still, and I content myself with this gift that reminds me of something far more important. And I'm grateful.