Psalm 139
There is a Japanese word that has no equivalent in English: komorebi (木漏れ日). The literal translation of this word is “sunlight leaking through trees,” but the meaning of the word in Japanese is much deeper. The very specific way the sunlight shines gently through trees and the ever-shifting movement of layered shadows can only exist in a moment and, once that moment has passed, can never be repeated again. It’s a concept that undergirds one of the most meaningfully beautiful films I have ever seen, Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” released just last year. Hirayama, the main character of the movie, expresses komorebi in the simple phrase, “Next time is next time. Now is now.”
The entirety of “Perfect Days” is a slice-of-life story. No big, sensational action or event happens to push the narrative forward. We simply follow Hirayama as he goes about his life, working each day as a public toilet cleaner in the high-end Shibuya district of Tokyo. Each day, he goes through the same routing. He starts by waking up in his modest home on the other side of Tokyo and driving his van to work listening to a song from one of his treasured cassettes. He then works throughout the day (often with his obnoxious and indifferent young assistant Takashi), taking a lunch break at the same spot on the grounds of a shrine, taking black-and-white pictures of the same spot of “komorebi” that he develops and keeps in many boxes at his home. At the end of the day, he drives his van back home to his cassette music and reads one of his books before going to sleep. Occasionally, the routine of Hirayama’s day diverges due to outside interventions, like his niece Niko coming to visit him unexpectedly for a few days. Even still, none of these divergences are particularly exciting like we would expect in movies.
Hirayama is intentional and present in every part of what most of us would consider a mundane, ordinary, and often boring routine. He embraces his work and even takes pride in his work of cleaning toilets, his thoroughness evident in the results of his labor. In one of the busiest cities in the entire world, where many people are working long hours at what are often considered more “successful” careers that value them for the amount they produce, Hirayama leads a life that rejects prioritizing production, gives no thought to feverish ambition, and makes space for the present over everything else. Looking at the world through the eyes of Hirayama in the two-hour runtime of “Perfect Days,” we are encouraged to pay attention to the intimate beauty of ordinary, everyday life instead of the grandeur of the mountaintops that a great deal of us are always trying to climb.
The intimate beauty to which Hirayama is always attentive is also named in Psalm 139. Here, the psalmist gives thanks to the Lord in language that doesn’t point to the monumental majesty of the universe, but rather the intimate wonder of what it means to be known personally in each of our lives by God. The psalm speaks to the whole of our lives, even the mundane moments, by affirming that God knows us when we sit down or when we rise up (v. 2) and is acquainted with all of our ways (v. 3). Not only is God present with us anywhere we go, from the highest of heights to the lowest of depths (v. 8-10), but God is also with us all the days of our lives, written in God’s own book (v. 16).
For most of us, our days don’t usually consist of grand adventures that we see in movies or read in books. We get up and get ready for the day and then we go about that day, whether it is a day of work, a day of rest, or some middle ground between the two. Yet, even in these ordinary moments, God is present with us, which gives the psalmist’s words a new dimension when we read, “Wonderful are your works; that I know very well” (v. 14).
If God is always present in each of our lives, moving alongside us personally wherever we go, then surely God’s works in our ordinary routines are still remarkable, if only we allow ourselves the ability to intentionally notice them in their moments among the often loud and demanding busyness of our lives.
In his practice of presence in the moment, Hirayama shows us that there is, in fact, beauty all around us, however gentle or quiet, that we can observe and give thanks for if we only allow ourselves to do so. In the intentional act of simply experiencing these everyday moments, as the psalmist affirms, we learn more intimately what it means that God knows us personally and is present beside us.
Questions for discussion
- What practices do you do on a regular basis to help you stay present?
- What is something beautiful you’ve noticed recently in your everyday life?
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