Wonder and An Irish Public Restroom
The bus rounded the corner, leaving behind the familiar cityscapes of Dublin.
Holley, B, and I spent part of March 2019 in the emerald city, the land that cradled my ancestors. Ireland welcomed us with unseasonable sun for the week we stayed there, sampling Guinness (and Guinness stew), boxty’s, and the famous fish ‘n chips.
If I’m being honest, I feel in love with mushy peas in Dublin. I did.
On our last days we enlisted a bus tour company led by an enigmatic man named John. The destination? The Wicklow Mountains and the town of Glendalough, home of St. Kevin who must be one of the most uniquely named saints of all time.
We boarded the bus and left the city for the rolling spaces of the southern Irish mountains. Our first stop was a place called Sandy Mount. A quaint town on Dublin Bay, gifted with the views of the Sandymount Strand and a 19th-century Martello tower built to defend the coast.
“We’re stopping here before we head into the mountains,” John said. Or sang. Hard to tell – throughout our tour he alternated between singing and shouting information about the various villages and rolling hills beyond the tinted glass of the bus windows.
Holley and B walked down to the shore, looking for shells or stones. We try to collect stones, shells, or both whenever we travel. There is something about a piece of a place that travels with you. Our various trophies sit stacked on our bookshelves, reminding us of a bigger world beyond our own geographical, mental, and even spiritual boundaries.
A new sun warmed in the Irish sky and a slight breeze pressed against our skin. “Five minutes!” John shouted.
Then it occurred that we should probably hit up a restroom before getting back on the bus. Ah, yes – but where?
The buildings built on the outcroppings above Sandymount Strand were locked, so the three of us walked a block from the bus looking for a café, market, anything that might have an open door policy.
What we found was unexpected and amazing.
When you travel, these moments are frequent. The world is wider than we could imagine, in ways we can’t imagine. If we are brave enough to wonder at the difference, rather than condemn it, something opens in our souls.
We find greater wonder within us when we see that our familiar spaces do not contain the whole of the world.
On a side street not far away from the shore was a building that looked like a typical American portable toilet experienced a gentle merging with a photo booth. However, there was a solid door rather than a curtain.
“Interesting,” I said.
“It isn’t free,” Holley noticed.
No, in fact there was a slot for a few euros and since the door wouldn’t budge I assumed the two realities were connected.
We looked at it for a moment, wondering why it looked the way it did.
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said. I’m always willing to be the guinea pig. For good or for ill.
We entered a few coins and the door slid open. The first thing I noticed was yes, this was a public toilet.
The other thing I noticed was that everything was extremely clean and extremely wet. When compared to American public toilets, I was used to the latter but not the former.
I went on with my business and then noticed that some sort of timer had been running the entire time I was in there.
“Hmm.” I looked around. “Wonder what that’s for?”
As I left, getting ready to hold the door for my wife or daughter, the door slammed shut.
What in the world?
The next thing we heard was the jet blast of water from inside the butter dish-style building. It wasn’t a leak, or a spray even, but a blast.
“Whoa.”
Well, that explained the soaked surfaces I encountered. We waited until the cycle ended and, though we tempted our bus driver’s patience, took care of the necessary tasks.
Later that day, we would see so many things. The Wicklow Mountains spread out before us in their dusty rolling wonder, the water flowing downward towards the Guinness properties and eventually to the brewery in Dublin.
John agreed to stop for pictures on a bluff above a rolling valley, with the caveat that we “not leave him out of the shot!” He joined us all in our pictures, invited or uninvited. We welcomed him like the crazy uncle he was.
We ate lunch in a pub older than the United States, smelling woodsmoke and stew as we rested from the long ride.
The three of us walked the sacred graveyard of Glendalough, peeked through the windows of St. Kevin’s “kitchen” (a small church building), and paused for photos at the two-tiered lakes just a short walk from a tower that stood against invasion for at least a thousand years.
And yet, sitting here on the other side of nearly 3 years and a global pandemic, my mind goes back to the Sandy Mount public bathroom.
Why?
As actor Wynn Everett said on a recent episode of the Makers & Mystics podcast, when we’ve been a part of intense spectacle for too long we yearn for a “boring life.”
Sometimes I believe the Divine speaks in wild and upheaving ways.
But we don’t live in the wildness all the time.
If we confine God to the wildness, the upheaval, the majestic spiritual high, we miss what it means to be fully human, which is to be truly spiritual.
Instead, if we pause and listen and allow ourselves permission, we might find wonder in unexpected places…
The wonder of numbers and provision as we balance our bank account.
A child’s cry that stabs at our eardrums is the miracle announcement of need and desire.
When breeze accelerates and then suddenly calms, and we have that feeling of lightness.
And yes…when we encounter a self-cleaning public bathroom on the side street of a town a world away from home there is space for us to experience the thing that reminds us of the Divine. The experience that brings the Divine front and center of our vision.
Today, I welcome you to have a “boring life.” In the small details that seem ridiculously mundane there is poetry and a symphony, masterpieces beyond what we could imagine.
If only we cared to see the Divine in the mundane, and learn to be surprised with wonder at things beyond our expectations.
Photo by Paul Costello on Unsplash