Sunday Morning Stroll

The last few days I’ve been falling asleep as soon as it’s dark (6 pm) and rising around 3 or 4 a.m. I spend time in the darkness reading and writing. So when dawn softens the sky, I’m ready to step out of our small apartment and see some light and color. 

This Sunday, all that was on our schedule was meeting with our cell group at 10 a.m. So I put on walking shoes at 6:30, crossed the busy Ladprao road, and strolled down my favorite soi (side street), which leads to the canal. My goal was to take pictures of all the flowers that are blooming along that street.

Here is the soi:

It’s all residences and apartment buildings, with a few businesses

(laundromat, convenience store, coffee shop, chicken ranch) thrown in.

The clang and clamor of traffic recedes once I’ve stepped into this peaceful enclave. And these small spots of beauty give me such joy:

At about this point I met a dog, who rushed out of a garage to sniff at me. We made friends, and I decided to take his picture. However, the moment I took my phone out and snapped a photo, he began barking at me ferociously. Apparently dogs don’t like their picture taken in Thailand.

My walk continued, a bit hurriedly:

I stopped by a brightly blossoming tree to take a photo. The homeowner, an elderly lady, came out and smiled at me, apparently happy that her flowers made me happy too.

Just a few steps beyond the flowering tree, however, was this…

…with the accompanying smells.

Then, however, I reached the canal, with its glorious array of bougainvillea.  

I was reminded, on this Sunday morning walk, of Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur”:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.