Yesterday as I left the church, I was stopped by the red light at Groveland and Lyndale Avenues. It was a particularly warm and sunny September day and the air conditioning in the car had not found its groove yet so I had the windows down. I was aware of the sun beating off the hot pavement of road and sidewalk. I looked over at the stone workers who have been repairing and rebuilding the front entry steps of the church. How uncomfortable it must be to do such work on these scorching days!

And then my eyes were drawn to the oddity sitting on the sidewalk at the corner, resting nearly at the curb. A box fan…..sitting there….its circular blades turning in the slight breeze that was unseen. I laughed. Was this some kind of joke? Was there a hidden camera someplace filming people's reactions to this cooling device on this unusually hot autumn day?

I observed two young men and a young woman pushing a stroller with a small child approach the corner. They looked at the fan. They looked around to see if it belonged to someone. They watched the blades turn round and round. And then, they too, laughed as they crossed the street.

As the light turned green and inched into the traffic, I somehow felt lighter than I had earlier. Who knows why this fan was sitting where it was? It could have simply been abandoned by someone who was moving. It could have fallen off a truck and been set upright by someone with a quirky sense of humor. All I know is that its odd placement made be happy. Its gently whirling,ineffective blades blew away the heaviness of a day's worth of worries.

Whatever your day holds I hope you can be awake and open to the oddities that might come your way. The strange yet welcomed compliment. The newspaper headline that causes you to stop in your tracks and read the whole article. The bird whose song interrupts what seems like a serious, not to be interrupted, conversation. The flower that is growing through the cracks of the sidewalk. All manner of things abandoned by the side of the road.

Oddities wake us up and help us live in the moment, help us remember to not take ourselves or the world too seriously. In that wake up call comes healing and, if we are lucky, a good laugh. And couldn't we all use a few more of those?

"Today isn't any other day, you know." Lewis Carroll