The Centredness of Soaps

It was an innocuous moment: that moment between wiping my mouth dry after brushing my teeth and switching off the bathroom lights. I hadn’t had a rough day, or even a great day, just another ordinary day, the sum total of which will make up my life.

My eyes fell to my glass soap holder. I had recently moved it from its private place in my bathroom cupboard, where it was the keeper of Q-Tips (ear buds), emery boards (nail files) and other strategic personal items, back to its honoured place on the counter as keeper of my soaps. I find pleasure in soaps, the functional ones, the scented ones, the glycerine ones, the square ones and the round ones. In fact, any ones.

Reaching to flick off the lights, my glance flitted to the soaps; I took in their roundness; how they collected together in my grandmother’s bowl. In that moment I felt myself become centred. Stillness settled within me. The daily concerns of meeting deadlines, finding time to write, investing in others, staying connected with family across oceans, stray dogs, haunting poverty, the loneliness and heart sickness I see in others, my personal limitations and the gross injustices that litter our world were pulled together in a moment of centredness.

I can do what I can do. I must do what I am called to do. I long to live a life that makes a difference. Yet, I am not the rescuer of the world. That is the life calling of someone far greater than I. Ironically, my grandmother, whose glass jewellery box this was, had hardship and great heartache in her life. She died a few weeks short of her 60th birthday. I was nine years old.

I give thanks for her, for the beauty of soaps and for what remains of her jewellery box.