Take Off Your Shoes!

Picture if you will, an elderly woman seated on a slow moving train, quietly looking out the window, noticing everything that passes by: the lines of houses, the wire-connected poles, the rolling clouds, the children at play. A man she doesn’t know is seated next to her. Smiling, the woman points to something in the distance. “See there,” she chuckles, “the row of corn in the field. Isn’t it wonderful?” The man is curious. “What’s so wonderful about a common row of corn?” he asks. To which the woman gently replies,

“You think it strange that a little field of corn has meaning. But, you see, last week my doctor told me that I have but little time remaining. And ever since — everything has looked so beautiful — so important to me. I feel as if I had been asleep and have only just awakened.”

The poet Elizabeth Barett Browning wrote:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with…