In bed
04/09/16 05:12
On several occasions, my mother told me, “I don’t want to have a bed that is too comfortable. If I get too attached to my bed, I might not want to travel.” Whatever else happened in here life, mother never lost her desire to travel. Even after she was suffering from brittle diabetes and congestive heart failure, she would talk of the places that she would like to visit. She would, however, comment regularly during the final couple of years of her life about how much she enjoyed her bed and how comfortable it was.
There was nothing special about that particular bed. It wasn’t the same bed that she had moved from Montana to Oregon when she give up the house in which we were raised. It was an antique slightly less than full size bed that we inherited from my wife’s side of the family and fits in the rather small bedroom that was mom’s when she lived in our home.
I have been thinking about beds a bit because we’ve been doing a bit of moving around in the past few weeks. In order to accommodate six extra people in our home when our Australian guests and our daughter and son-in-law arrived on the same day, we slept in a basement bedroom while others slept in the bedroom we usually occupy. Then we moved into our camper for two weeks’ vacation. Now we’re back in our regular bedroom. I can’t say I notice much difference in the way the beds feel. I guess there must be some differences. Three different mattresses can’t be all the same, but I slept equally well in all three settings.
What I did notice was the difference in sounds. Our bedroom is at the northeast corner of our house and I enjoy sleeping with the windows open. Most of the sounds coming from the outside of the house are natural sounds: wind, birds, an occasional turkey call. We do hear the neighbors on occasion and can hear other sounds, but the loudest human-caused sound is the refrigerator in the kitchen. Down in the basement, we were isolated from the outdoor sounds and treated to a few rumblings from our home’s plumbing. I was unaware of how much water runs when the water softener cycles until sleeping next door to it. Then, in our camper, we parked in several different locations. In a few we had the sounds of neighbors in other campers. Some were delightfully quiet. One had a delightful little river dancing over the rocks to lull us to sleep. The different sounds seem as critical to the quality of sleep as does the surface upon which we are lying.
I agree with my mother. I don’t ever want to lose the joy of traveling. I don’t want to become so attached to one place that I am unwilling to make a change. I rather enjoyed the change in perspective of moving around inside of our own house and sleeping in a different room. Our house has two bedrooms on the top floor. I don’t think I’ve ever slept in either one of them. Perhaps I’ll have to try it out some time.
For now we’re trying to get back to some of our routines. The first week back at work is filled with tasks that had been set aside in order to be gone for two weeks. The ministry isn’t in the first place a vocation of repetition and sameness. There are always new challenges and crises to which a minister must respond. People’s lives take unforeseen twists and turns and part of what we do is to journey with the people that we serve. A minister needs to be prepared to go from planning a wedding to a bereavement call within minutes. With all of that going on it helps to have a few routines in your life such as a comfortable place to sleep. So we’re back to our usual bed in our usual room. It does make it a bit easier to find my socks in the morning.
It is important for me to remind myself of how much luxury and privilege is reflected in the simple fact that I have choices about where to sleep at night. There are plenty of people in the world who don’t know where they will be sleeping each night. At the end of 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were 65.3 million refugees, an increase of 5.8 million over the year before. To put that in perspective, of all of the world’s people about one in eleven is homeless. Millions and millions of children and adults sleep in temporary accommodations every night. Some refugees spend as much as 20 or more years living in temporary camps. They don’t get to compare mattresses or choose the color of their bedding. They don’t get to think about whether the room on the north is more comfortable than the room on the south side of the house. They aren’t afforded the level of privacy that we take for granted.
It is appropriate to say a little prayer of gratitude as I slip beneath the sheets for the blessing of a comfortable bed and a secure place to sleep. Saying such a prayer helps on those rare nights when the phone rings and I have to get up to help someone else when I’d rather be sleeping. One thing about being on call is that no matter how much of a struggle it is to get myself up and going, I know that my life is not as disrupted or as uncomfortable as the people I am going to meet.
So, I hope I don’t become too attached to my bed. I enjoy good sleep as much as anyone else, but I know that the joys of being awake and being involved in the lie of my community are even greater than a quiet snooze.
There was nothing special about that particular bed. It wasn’t the same bed that she had moved from Montana to Oregon when she give up the house in which we were raised. It was an antique slightly less than full size bed that we inherited from my wife’s side of the family and fits in the rather small bedroom that was mom’s when she lived in our home.
I have been thinking about beds a bit because we’ve been doing a bit of moving around in the past few weeks. In order to accommodate six extra people in our home when our Australian guests and our daughter and son-in-law arrived on the same day, we slept in a basement bedroom while others slept in the bedroom we usually occupy. Then we moved into our camper for two weeks’ vacation. Now we’re back in our regular bedroom. I can’t say I notice much difference in the way the beds feel. I guess there must be some differences. Three different mattresses can’t be all the same, but I slept equally well in all three settings.
What I did notice was the difference in sounds. Our bedroom is at the northeast corner of our house and I enjoy sleeping with the windows open. Most of the sounds coming from the outside of the house are natural sounds: wind, birds, an occasional turkey call. We do hear the neighbors on occasion and can hear other sounds, but the loudest human-caused sound is the refrigerator in the kitchen. Down in the basement, we were isolated from the outdoor sounds and treated to a few rumblings from our home’s plumbing. I was unaware of how much water runs when the water softener cycles until sleeping next door to it. Then, in our camper, we parked in several different locations. In a few we had the sounds of neighbors in other campers. Some were delightfully quiet. One had a delightful little river dancing over the rocks to lull us to sleep. The different sounds seem as critical to the quality of sleep as does the surface upon which we are lying.
I agree with my mother. I don’t ever want to lose the joy of traveling. I don’t want to become so attached to one place that I am unwilling to make a change. I rather enjoyed the change in perspective of moving around inside of our own house and sleeping in a different room. Our house has two bedrooms on the top floor. I don’t think I’ve ever slept in either one of them. Perhaps I’ll have to try it out some time.
For now we’re trying to get back to some of our routines. The first week back at work is filled with tasks that had been set aside in order to be gone for two weeks. The ministry isn’t in the first place a vocation of repetition and sameness. There are always new challenges and crises to which a minister must respond. People’s lives take unforeseen twists and turns and part of what we do is to journey with the people that we serve. A minister needs to be prepared to go from planning a wedding to a bereavement call within minutes. With all of that going on it helps to have a few routines in your life such as a comfortable place to sleep. So we’re back to our usual bed in our usual room. It does make it a bit easier to find my socks in the morning.
It is important for me to remind myself of how much luxury and privilege is reflected in the simple fact that I have choices about where to sleep at night. There are plenty of people in the world who don’t know where they will be sleeping each night. At the end of 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were 65.3 million refugees, an increase of 5.8 million over the year before. To put that in perspective, of all of the world’s people about one in eleven is homeless. Millions and millions of children and adults sleep in temporary accommodations every night. Some refugees spend as much as 20 or more years living in temporary camps. They don’t get to compare mattresses or choose the color of their bedding. They don’t get to think about whether the room on the north is more comfortable than the room on the south side of the house. They aren’t afforded the level of privacy that we take for granted.
It is appropriate to say a little prayer of gratitude as I slip beneath the sheets for the blessing of a comfortable bed and a secure place to sleep. Saying such a prayer helps on those rare nights when the phone rings and I have to get up to help someone else when I’d rather be sleeping. One thing about being on call is that no matter how much of a struggle it is to get myself up and going, I know that my life is not as disrupted or as uncomfortable as the people I am going to meet.
So, I hope I don’t become too attached to my bed. I enjoy good sleep as much as anyone else, but I know that the joys of being awake and being involved in the lie of my community are even greater than a quiet snooze.