I usually slug down a cup of coffee before going out running in the morning, so by the time I hit the midpoint of my run I’m ready to take advantage of the facilities. Fortunately, the turnaround point on my most common route is right near the restrooms in a local park. Every run, my ritual of visiting the Bluemont Park restrooms is the same. First, I am pleasantly surprised to find the bathroom open, even though it’s routinely open. Next, I slowly enter the bathroom. Before I get too far from the door, I peek into the stalls as best I can to scope out any dangerous people who might be lurking there. In the many years I’ve been using the park restroom I have never, ever felt threatened. In fact, it’s rare to even find it occupied at all, and yet I always check. As I advance into the place I take a look around and marvel at the fact that everything is clean and working, and that the place isn’t graffiti’d or otherwise trashed. Again, I get this feeling of happy surprise despite years of visits to a place that has never been anything but clean and functional.
My reactions to the place are not based on my expectations of the Bluemont Park restroom itself. Rather, they’re based on the public restrooms of my youth. New York was in pretty bad shape in the 70’s when I was growing up. Crime was rampant, and little money was available to maintain infrastructure. A large number of public restrooms had been taken over by seedy characters, either as residences or places of business. A few were operational but were in an incredibly filthy and rundown condition. The rest had simply been locked up, because they had been vandalized past the point of function, had broken down, couldn’t be maintained, or as a measure to keep out the seedy characters.
So, in my current experience I enter a mundane place and find the wonder in it. While most park users probably don’t even think about the place at all, each and every time I marvel at clean, safe indoor plumbing. I’m not sure if it’s possible to enter into an I-Thou relationship with a bathroom, but if it is, I’m there.
How many other opportunities are there to recognize the everyday wonders of the world? How many things am I taking for granted that I could be appreciating in more depth? A comfortable home? A beautiful vista? Even rush hour traffic, for it means that I have the wherewithal to have a car, and all these other people and I remain gainfully employed in the midst of a deep recession.
Rabbi Mike Comins points out in his book A Wild Faith that there are certain prayers that help us to recognize the sacred and exceptional in our lives. Most blessings in Judaism are intentional, that is, they are said when you’re about to do something or have done something planned. However, there’s also a category of response blessings, to be said in response to an unexpected, spontaneous happening – seeing a rainbow, smelling a flower, and so on.
I’m not ready to start saying b’rochot over the Bluemont Park bathroom (not to digress, but there is a blessing that is appropriate for recitation after having gone to the bathroom), but I’m going to try and take the sense of wonderment I feel over the place with me to more experiences in my life.
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