Singing and Laundry~

Yesterday, in an ordinary moment, in an ordinary place, doing the most ordinary thing, I met an extraordinary person.  

It was just after breakfast, and sometime before lunch when it happened. I had just entered the laundromat in my hurried way, thinking about the hundred things that needed doing. I was carrying an awkward basket of dirty clothes and they were spilling out onto the floor, when I heard it, the most beautiful singing. Singing that brought all my thoughts to a halt and begged me to do nothing but listen.   

It was as though I had entered a temple, somewhere deep in the jungles of south east Asia, not a laundromat full of loud whirling machines and abandoned stale coffee cups.  The singing was in an old and faraway language and the voice that carried it had the same quality of ancientness. The melody filled my ears and my heart. I put my basket of dirty things down and I went to investigate. 

And there, not far from where I stood, was a small elderly asian man, sitting on an old rickety wooden chair, with a wooden cane propped up beside him.  His eyes were closed and he was singing with all his heart to soapy laundry, swirling around in a sudsy spiral.  

When he paused for a moment between songs, I couldn't help myself but speak, to stammer out some kind of authentic, honest expression of the joy that had instantly sprung up in my heart upon hearing him sing.

To my poetic dismay, all I could manage was ,"I like your singing."  To which he replied, (and the poetry of this moment was all his); "me too, singing is medicine, it keeps the head from thinking, more singing, less thinking, less thinking, less sickness. Where I come from people sing when they do their work, because that way they don't have to think too much, and everyone knows that too much thinking makes the heart sick. I like to sing my songs to God," he said.  And with that he closed his eyes, and began another song.

I put my laundry in the machine, added the soap, and then the coins, before I paused for a long moment to give thanks to this wise person, whose song, touched my heart, as surely as it did Gods.  I do agree with him I thought, singing is indeed a kind of medicine, it heals our hearts in profound ways.  Soulful singing is not reserved for holy places, or stages, or the shower, but as this new friend showed me, singing brings the holy place to us, and can be done anywhere, at any time. 

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