I love a rainy day.  Those days spent inside four sturdy walls, cozily tucked away from the demands of the outside world- contentedly busy with life within.  And when life within is peaceful, there is no place I’d rather be.  Than here.

Home.

I have thought a lot lately about joy and purpose and living life to the fullest.  There are urgent voices calling me to go deeper, search further, run faster.  The path is often unsure and the way is uncertain.  The journey travelled , fraught with danger and riddled with irony.  There is much to take seriously.  Indeed, one must take it all to heart.

But today.  On this rainy, quiet Saturday.  I stop and turn away from all of the questions.  The unanswered  ‘why’, the unspoken ‘yes’ and the unexplained ‘no.’   From the rumour mill, the debates, the philosophical discussions.   To find instead what lies in wait for me in the stillness.  Here and now.  On this mid-way point of the weekend.  Time remaining suspended between the realities of yesterday and the hopes of tomorrow.

It was an extraordinary day.  I cleaned.   I baked, I read, I played.   I did not feel pulled to run too quickly from point A to point B.  I organized, de-cluttered, telephoned, browsed.  I ate half a jar of fresh salsa right from the ceramic bowl in which I had carefully combined ingredients.  I lit a Christmas candle- Vanilla Bean Noel.  I listened to little fingers plunk ivory keys on our antique Amherst.  I took time to think.  To care.  To listen.  To pray.

To entwine my fingers with those of my cherished child.  To hold my daughters in my arms.  To say “I love you’.

Ordinary days become extraordinary when we allow them to unfold organically from the cocoon of the mind into the beauty of the present.  Much like the extraordinary wonder of a butterfly, a day can be beautiful in its time.  Beauty found in living presently, transparently- it is raw and untouched.  Free.

Soothing.  The rain softly falls on cobbled stone outside my door, and I am hidden deep within.  Here at the heart of all that really matters.

Home.