Today was filled with the miracles of nature. I will never do justice to describing what I have seen today. I woke up early this morning, about 5:30 am and decided to stay in bed and read. I have been doing a lot of pleasurable reading of books, plays and short stories since I arrived in Limerick and this morning I was into a short story called AWAKENINGS by an American author of the late 19Th century, Kate Chopin. The University book store is just beginning to fill its shelves with what I assume is required reading for a literature class and I am taking advantage of that. I have read a series of stories, THE ROSE GARDEN, by Maveve Brennan, a native Dublinder, who wrote for the New Yorker Magazine. I also finished a rewrite by Steve Martin of a play, a comedy written in 1910 by Carl Sternheins called The UNDERPANTS, which is hysterical. All this is new to me and that is what I am taking advantage of, the opportunity to partake of things I have not known or experienced before. I am expanding my horizons on many fronts.
And speaking of horizons, I digress. For what I started to tell you was that early this morning while reading in bed, I could hear the rain and the wind whipping through the trees and whistling through the window ,and at just at exactly the right time I glanced up over the top of my book and found myself looking at a rainbow rising before me out of the tree tops. I watched as the sun cast a mystical light on the swaying willows across the creek and I was mesmerized and joyous and at the same time, thinking what a way to start the day. Every time I see a rainbow I remember what a rabbi told me when I was a teenager. He said that when you see a rainbow you know that G-d is smiling, happy. But it occurred to me this morning as I looked at the rainbow, that it is not just a symbol of Divine pleasure, but perhaps the rainbow itself is the smile of the Divine presence made visible if only for a minute.
I never made my way across campus until about 12:30 p.m. I was heading for that cup of coffee and decided to take the long way, both for the exercise and for the opportunity to walk over the swinging bridge that spans the Shannon. I have often seen heron and swans in the water when crossing the bridge, but today I saw something entirely unexpected. As a leaned over the railing and looked below I spotted one swan in the water and another sitting high up on her nest, a thrown set up high among wild flowers, trees and other vegetation on a tiny island. I watched for some time and occasionally saw her young poke their long necks out from under her. I was amazed at what I was witnessing. And what also struck me was how patient the male swan was as he waited in the water below. This evening as I walked back from dinner I stopped along the bridge to take a peak and soon the whole family came around a corner,floating along in the current below, two stately white parents and their two brown-speckled cygnets.(I had to look that up!).
Well what can I say after that? My day was complete.
I am back in my room now and I will soon retire to continue reading. It has been a soul-satisfying day and I am grateful.
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