Maybe it is because I am about to go on a trip in which I do not know what my accommodations will be like in centuries old monasteries, but I’ve been thinking about how much cherish my morning shower. I’ve been taking each one as if it might be my last.
I begin by acknowledging that I know I am spoiled because I rarely take a shower at my home. Most of my showers are at the gym. I go to the gym 6 mornings a week and on Saturdays when I take a rest day, I sleep in. I do not take a shower. I brush my teeth, put on some stretchy pants and call it a day.
But on those other six days, I work out, mainly because I know I will be able to take a delicious shower afterwards.
I run on the treadmill as fast as my nearly half a century body can handle, until my heart rate is fast enough that whatever has annoyed or angered me in the last 24 hours has melted with any body fat that has been kind enough reward my efforts. Then I lift weights nearly as much as my own weight. I pretend they are my problems or people who stop in the middle of a lane to turn.
All of this reminds me of my hero, Brian Doyle, who too, loved the simple pleasure of what he called “the wicked hot shower.” In his A Book of Uncommon Prayer, he wrote a prayer of thanksgiving for the wicked hot shower,
Oh God help me bless my soul is there any pleasure quite so artless and glorious and simple and unadorned and productive and restorative as a blazing hot shower when you really really want a hot shower? When you are not yet fully awake, when you are wiped from two hours of serious basketball, when you are weary and speechless after trip or trauma?
Yes. I will about the perfect shower as I carry my backpack from monastery to monastery this next month. Taking weak, cold showers, where you must dress quickly, not particularly dry because the only shower is down the hall from your room, makes you appreciate the simple pleasure of a perfect shower all over again. I will look forward to my delicious shower when I return. The perfect water pressure. Knowing exactly where to set the temperature. And knowing that there is a robe outside the stall just for you.
(FYI: I leave on Wed. Keep me in your prayers)
Safe travels and may cold, uncomfortable showers jar your imagination and inspire another undaunted joy in a most unexpected way. (It’s happened before!)
Prayers for traveling mercies. Enjoy, and bring back all the joys to share!