$57 rugs and dog shit

once upon a time i was certain about god. then in some subsequent chapter i had a dark night of the soul. in those years i was certain i had no faith. however, in light of the recent present it appears that i was merely going through a grand stretching of spirit. it would seem that my faith remains...in a different configuration perhaps. of course there is no ending yet.

and so here, in the middle of that novel, i have a story.

my daughter bought a rug at target for about 1/2 off - it was the kind without backing that i needed for my wood floors. i asked her to check the next time she was there to see if they had a larger one for my family room. she called from the store; it was only 150 bucks. i didn't go right away and so when i finally went i tried something i had not done in a long, long while: i prayed that if the rug was right for my room (size, color etc) that it would still be there. i arrived, only to discover that it was gone. someone else must have bought it. now i had a million things to do, but i wandered the store anyway, bummed. then suddenly there it was, stuffed behind some other things marked "clearance" on a completely different aisle. it had been marked down to 57 dollars. i was delighted. i took it home, pleased and hopeful. it matched everything in our home like we had ordered it...and it was just the right size.

that night we left for the coast for my husband's father's heart surgery but it was postponed. i returned the next morning only to find that our dog (who'd been let out by a neighbor) had left several piles of diarrhea on the new rug. there were puddles of it on the wood floor in 2 other rooms as well. i scrubbed and cleaned for over an hour, but in rather good spirits. i was amused.

its hard to explain my spirits, but i think it was because i knew the story i was in the midst of wasn't about the rug itself - the color and cloth woven into a shape. the gift of the $57 rug that perfectly suited me was the moment of the gift. to have the rug or not to have it didn't matter. if the dog shit ruined the rug - the gift remained. the gift was that tender moment of offering from the god of the universe to me.

i am bothered by the oft-used phrase "isn't god good" that people use when they get what they want (or even what they desperately need) as though if they had not received it, god would cease to be good. i know a family who just lost a child. she was 5. was god not good? i do not know why she was allowed to die, but it cannot be for lack of goodness. as i scrubbed the new rug i remembered how madeleine l'engle had once said something about how she needed a god who was also in the excrement.

he is. she is. my little 57 dollar rug covered in dog shit proclaims it. like a psalm.