December 9: Signs

This morning we were importunately awakened at 4:30 by our old cat, who had an accident while lying in bed between my husband and me. After we stripped the bed and started a load of laundry, we were both up for the day. I'm not normally a morning person, so this was found time. I got in my run at the gym at the beginning of the day rather than the end. I called the vet and made an appointment. Then I got a call that the guy was finally coming to replace our broken microwave oven. So I had about an hour to do the errands I had planned to spread out over this day off. With the last load in the washing machine and the cat curled up on the couch (on a towel), I rushed off to Reny's.

I do a lot of my thinking while in my car. This morning my mind was full of my beloved cat, whom I adopted almost exactly 16 years ago. Her health is declining and various medications don't seem to be helping her. I looked up into the morning's beautiful blue sky and asked for some sort of sign, something to let me know that she'd be ok, or that I'd be ok if she's not. Be careful what you wish for.

Back home, after remaking the bed, taking care of some other chores, getting the kitchen ready for the microwave installer, and cleaning up the cat's latest mishap in the bathroom and getting her soothed and re-settled on the couch, two elderly gentlemen knocked at the door. They wanted to tell me about the life of Jesus. It being the Christmas season and all, that certainly seems appropriate. If you're Christian. Which I don't consider myself to be. So that's what I told them, kindly, reassuring them that yes, I have a source of spiritual comfort in these dark times, just not Christian comfort.

Just then the microwave installer showed up and I was distracted by that, but it later occurred to me in a moment of spiritual panic that maybe the visit by the two men was my sign. And I just blew it with God.

I'm watching the river flow between two snowy banks right now, thinking about how easily we can allow the mundane to distract us from the spiritual. But sometimes the mundane is the spiritual. If the divine is to be found in a book of stories about Jesus, then why am I more uplifted watching a flock of doves lift off the bird seed I scattered in the driveway?

Cat's soft white throat, purr--
this is my comfort for now.
And for tomorrow...?