It couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes. Maybe only five.
I slept in this morning and didn’t get the coffee going until around 8:30am. By the time it had stopped dripping, I could hear other family members starting to move about.
I took my book and my coffee out onto the front porch, followed by the dog and the cat. For about ten or fifteen minutes, I sat quietly and read, while the animals scouted about.
My wife joined me with her coffee, and we chatted for a little about our plans for the day. A few minutes later, my middle child came to join us. The three of us sat on the bench that looks out over the yard and watched the sky, trying to decide whether or not those thunderstorms we were expecting would actually arrive.
Then my oldest boy joined us. The bench was full at this point, so he took a seat on the porch swing, sipping his own cup of coffee.
The last out to join us was our youngest, wrapped in her blanket. She crawled up into the porch swing and cuddled against her older brother.
And that’s when it struck me that we were all there— and how rare it was for all five of us (plus the dog and the cat) to gather together like this on a morning.
Like I said: the moment soon passed. In just five or ten minutes, folks started to wander off to attend to their various callings. But for that one moment, we were there, together: seven living creatures whose lives are deeply interconnected–and I was present to witness it.
No, I didn’t feel the urge to run and get my phone to capture the moment in a photograph. I was simply grateful to be able to capture the experience, as I was experiencing it, in my heart and my mind.
365 Simplify 