(Just a non-academic reflection of theological and moral import.)
I arrived on Eastern’s campus on a Monday, bright and early, as they say. After dropping my little sister off at the neighboring community college, I did a poor plowing job on the now snow covered road on my way to campus. With several hours until my next class, the usual temptation came to me: just put the heater on high, pull out the emergency blanket from the trunk, pull your hat down over your eyes and drift away into a cramped car-nap (my fellow commuters, you should be familiar with my use of jargon). But this day, I resisted my guardian devil’s call to sloth: I packed my bag and made my way to the REC-IM!
Here I was able to spend a good three hours getting in touch with my inner fish at the Club pool, sweating out the toxins of a week of indulgence in the sauna (while reading essays on literature, of course), and after a good old fashioned hot-cold treatment in this manner I submerged myself in the finest luxury our University has to offer: the club jacuzzi. It was only after suffering the bite of winter winds, the exertion of swimming, and the seasonal polarity of the sauna that I felt worthy to laze around the hot tub.
It was in this state of rare luxury that I was presented with an amazing spectacle. The bay windows of the Club Pool, right next to the hot tub, give on a clear view of the outdoors. While the bubbling heat relaxed my sore and sleepless muscles, a shower of snowflakes covered the cold earth not more than three yards beyond me. While I smiled in bliss, the heads of passersby were downcast and frowning. The contrast was striking. It was almost unfair.
I got to thinking about my own blessings. I thought of the many luxuries, small and humble though they may be, that our campus affords us. I used to harshly criticize the school. I thought of the great privilege it is to be a college student in the first place, when many may never have the chance. I used to buck against the goad of it all. I thought of my fortune to have shelter: one so wonderful yet so short lived as this one, as well as a house with central heating, the hospitality of family, a boiling workplace, when many are yet without shelter, freezing to death in this bitter winter. I have cursed all of those places many a time. Yet I don’t think I was just a selfish bitter punk that whole time. I always realized I was blessed and fortunate. I always knew that I never deserved to have any of those necessities much less luxuries. Perhaps, it was just a resentment to that strange moral space of having more than one deserves. I realized that I did not even deserve to be alive, yet there I was basking in the glory of a hot tub. The contrast was striking.
I got to thinking about Death. There were so many snowflakes. Watching them fall you can kind of zoom in on a single plane of action in that storm of infinite particles. When you zoom in you can begin to trace the path of a single flake as it falls or is whisked away (this adventure requires only a slightly trained eye and a calm disposition). After losing track of so many flakes in such fast succession. I thought also of how I only could hold a passerby in my gaze for no more than a quarter of a minute. Everything in my steamed lens of reality was transient. I thought then of Our Lady of Fatima who showed the children a vision of Hell: “souls were falling into Hell like snowflakes,” they said. I prayed that their vision was just enhanced time-lapse photography, not really as unthinkable as the relentless rapidity of weather before me. It couldn’t be. I thought of all the people passing by my one way glass. I mused how they were here one minute gone the next, how they may very well be there once again the next Monday, how they walked the same routine path, how they were probably really going nowhere in life, how they were all very likely to be depressed, how they were all very likely to feel no purpose in life, how they could very well all be dead by next Monday. I thought of how many of these people were possibly already in their own personal hell. Then, if I were to zoom out of my little camera world and see the tide of humans making trails in the snow, zoom out more and all across the world… then, I thought of how the vision of souls as snowflakes wasn’t really too far off. The comparison was striking.
I got to thinking about God. Sitting in a hot tub, attended not only by a lifeguard but also an institution, was a little taste of Heaven. I wonder if Heaven is a giant club pool (at least I hope there is one there for me…) Moreover, I wonder how close or how distant are my own musings from the Eternal Presence of God in Heaven, gazing down on man on Earth. Would he shed a tear, as I did, for the infinity of suffering that befalls all human beings through history, each and every human being every day? Indeed, for Christ left the hot tub of heaven for the snow-covered waste of Earth and wept over Jerusalem.
I got to thinking of many many more things…
Dear readers, you should try the hot tub meditation some time if ever you need food for thought.
Verba Transitura 