Due to late nights at work these days, I end up having my breakfast around noon.
Yesterday, as I sat alone on the dining table in our ‘informal’ dining room (we have a ‘formal’ one as well, see how God spoils me), I was still sleepy, having my paratha in silence. This room falls in the middle of two bedrooms, the passage and the kitchen. My elder daughter was in my bedroom on my left, talking to her friend on the phone about inviting two other friends over for a ‘day-spend’. My mother was in the room on the right, also on the phone, giving cooking tips to an aunt. Behind me in the kitchen, the maid was packing my dinner since I’d told her I’d be working late. Beside me was the other maid, cleaning the floors; it was her usual time to do so. From the other part of the house, dad was instructing the driver about certain chores. In the fourth room, my younger daughter was still asleep. Everyone was talking in gentle tones, their voices drifting my way every time a door opened. It was just another regular day in our home.
But as I sat there, a certain moment of sublime divinity enveloped me. The next bite still in my hand, I had an overwhelming need to close my eyes. When I did, I was all awash in a glow emanating from around my heart, spreading out in all directions, filling me with glorious loving energy. It was total bliss.
I was still sitting there, with my eyes closed, a beatific smile on my face, a piece of yoghurt-covered paratha in my hand, when my elder daughter drifted out of her room. “Mom, what are you doing?” she teased. “I’m feeling God,” I replied. The spell broken, I went back to my breakfast.
By the time I’d finished it, I came to the realization: God is in the details. In the little things that make up our lives, in domesticity and home and our loved ones. God is not to be ‘achieved’ or ‘sought’. God is to be ‘found’ — inside, outside, everywhere. Heaven is not something extraordinary, something out of this world. It is here and now. It is this moment.
It is the very ordinariness of life that holds heaven between the lines. We just need to read carefully.
100 Paths 