Cooking lessons
I was in the kitchen this evening making hummingbird nectar. I make 64 ounces at a time, now. I’m going through it pretty quickly these days, because while the hummingbirds sip it during the day, the bats have found my feeders and they drain them at night. These last two weeks, I’ve had to refill them every morning.
I’m an impatient cook in most circumstances, and I poured the sugar in once the water was nearly boiling, and then let it simmer a bit, for hummingbird safety. Once the sugar was in, though, it precluded a rolling boil. Instead, little bubbles formed at the bottom of the pot and seemed to disappear before they ever broke the surface of the water.
I’m easily amused, and I turned the light on over the stove to watch the bubbles form and disappear over and over, so fast my eyes could barely keep up. The lifespan of each bubble was a second or less; but there were always new bubbles forming, “old” bubbles popping. The activity in the pan was furious, continuous, predictable, with just enough variation to keep it interesting.
(I really know how to have a good time on a Friday night, don’t I?)
As I stood over the pot watching all this happen, I wondered if the perspective of A, and of the universe itself (god, if you prefer) regarding the world and this life was much like my perspective over the pot of boiling water. In ten seconds, I watched thousands upon thousands bubbles being born, growing, and dying, followed by more that did exactly the same. And while for any individual bubble it was an entire lifetime, for me, they lived and died almost instantaneously.
As I considered that, I felt something like patience come over me, and with it, the potential for deep peace. It struck me more deeply than that, and more lastingly, but every attempt I make to articulate it fails. Perhaps that’s to be expected when you feel like you may have stumbled upon the ineffable truth in your kitchen when you thought you were doing something else entirely.