OVER three decades ago I installed a bathtub at home, and with bubble bath suds sent from the US by my mother I enjoyed the relaxation it gave my tired body, and quite often read a book after work while soaking in the comfort giving warmth.
It was a luxury I came to enjoy, and looked forward to evenings when those moments in the tub gave me all the peace I need from the hustle and bustle of the outside world. And then came a water shortage with the municipality banning the use of bathtubs, as there wasn’t enough water to handle the basic needs leave alone luxuriating in a tub of much needed water!
The tub was used just to stand and shower. It was this morning as water overflowed in my overhead tank I realized the city seemed to have a surfeit of water. “Looks like we won’t be needing to have a water cut this year!” I commented to my neighbour as his tank also overflowed and we looked at rain clouds that were constantly appearing and filling the lakes.
“We haven’t had a water cut for quite a few years Bob!” replied my neighbour. “We haven’t?” I asked as he looked at me curiously, wondering which newspaper I subscribed to, or whether I created my own news.
It was a little later that I went for a shower and this time stared at my old faithful bathtub! I suddenly realized that I could have used it all these years and had not. “Wasted years when I could have relaxed in it!” I thought.
Thinking about the bathtub, made me think about many meditative and restorative practices we learnt in our youth or childhood, which we’d stopped using as the years went by. One of them being faith in a God above and time spent in prayer. Like my bathtub, we had used it well before and lived with simple beliefs that looked after our worries and fears. And then the water, our faith ran out and with that came tension and stress and all that follows when these two enter our lives. We ran to doctors and medication, like I’d used the shower, and found partial relief, but nothing that the tub our old faith in God offered.
Maybe it’s time to use the bathtub again. Get our faith back to its simple childlike state and watch ourselves again drifting into a state of peace and quiet, and absolute restoration. “Ma!” I shout to my mother who’s left the US and moved to her abode in the skies, “I need them bubble bath soap suds!”
“They’re now available at your local store Bob!” she says, and smiles at me as I fill myself up with a quiet childlike faith all over again..!
