Something Wonderful
- Pathways of Possibility
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
In this short story, Lilach Grimminger proposes that there is "much that is available to us if we could only have the right viewpoint." Within the story are clues for you to see it, too . . . if you so choose.
“There’s something wonderful washing over the world right now,” she said, looking at the first buds of the flowering cherry tree outside the window.
He looked up from a YouTube video he was watching on his iPad, utterly surprised.
“What?! Wonderful? I see the homeless downtown every day.
People who look like they stepped out of a Shakespearean play through a hole in the fabric of time straight into our time. They wear pants held up by a string and carry sacks on their shoulders. Sacks? No one but farmers have sacks… but they just walk down the street… I used to see one of those every few months, now I see three each day. Where is the wonderful?”
“It’s in there,” she said. “The frame of time is melting away. All frames are melting away. They used to hold separations – then was then, now is now, there was there, here is here. It changed now because the world expanded. The duality we built our lives on has melted away. We can’t be secure in the knowledge that ‘there’ will stay ‘there;’ sometimes it will try to be ‘here.’
“How is that wonderful?” he insisted.
“Because the glory that was there is also coming here. You used to have to wait until you died before you could feel it, but it’s coming here now. The eternal, the never changing inside the always changing.
The much that is available to us if we could only have the right viewpoint. Not drowning in “I’s;” not neglecting or abdicating so we can maintain a sense of self, but living with things in things, and letting them live in us, as we develop finer discernments, sharper abilities; not to destroy but to refine.”
He looked at her, surprised. That was new. It felt good yet his mind kept going back to the street people, the wailing sirens, the sounds of shots sometimes. Where is the wonderful? How do I get closer to it?
“You know,” he said, “I used to know this girl in high school. She wasn’t considered bright so she was sent to a special school, where they thought she would do better. I’m not sure of the details, but I know she still lives in our old community where not being bright is not a reason to live in the street. This care, is it part of the wonderful?” His words trailed to a stop.
The cruelty of this society appalled him. The ease with which people could find themselves in the street with nothing to their names, and the nonchalance with which everyone was just fine with it. “Well, if they didn’t do drugs they wouldn’t be in the street.” Or, “If they weren’t mentally challenged, they wouldn’t be in the street.” It’s insane. People don’t “belong” in the street. People don’t “deserve” to live under a bridge surrounded by filth.
“So where is the wonderful?” he insisted again, half talking to himself this time. “Perhaps it’s in the ‘in your face’ nature of everything,” he mused. “Perhaps it is in that of the Greek ‘good,’ ‘truth’ and ‘beauty.’ It looks like truth is getting clearer, even if not always pleasant. Perhaps ‘good’ and ‘beauty’ will follow.”
“Not too long ago,” he said, “I used to feel I had to shout so that people would stop their superficial chit-chat and tell me something real. Now reality seems to seep into every conversation, and even if they wanted, no one could ignore it anymore.
Perhaps it’s a beginning, a thread to follow in the labyrinth of confusion…. Something wonderful is washing over the world right now,” he repeated to himself... “I’ll listen to hear its approach; I’ll s-train my eyes to see it coming….”
If you appreciated this story, you may also want to read Lilach's "A Story That May Begin Tomorrow."
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