Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Present Moment

Bede's blog is particularly good this week. Flooding in the church is fodder for a discussion about the nature of spiritual attentiveness to the present moment....
So if, in retrospect, I go back to that moment, what can I recover? What was the Present Moment, if I had been willing to be there? Well, there was a lot of frantic dashing about, some of which was useful and some of which was merely using up excess energy. There was the feeling of tension and anxiety. There was some feeling of hopelessness while the powers of nature roared outside our door and we couldn't do anything about it. And, if I'm right, there was a rather cosmic chuckle behind things at the thought that we could build a Church on this hillside and forever escape the powers that govern the law that says that water flows downhill. And there is also that freedom that does come with practicing the present moment: the sense that the best and most lasting things about life are behind and beyond and within all that is going on in this present moment. The present moment in fact can liberate or bind us, and sometimes it does both. But, as the old hymn says: "Underneath are the everlasting arms." (source)


-t

No comments: