“I who have died am alive again today. And this is the Sun’s birthday. This is the birthday of life, and of love, and wings …”
—ee cummings, “I Thank You, God, for Most This Amazing”
One thing I absolutely love about Sunday is permission to rest, to float, to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out … the Prayer of Stillness.
So much of life is working on undoing or redoing the effects of the past, solving problems, fixing what is broken, and making amends. Life is also often consumed with “securing” the future, planning, preparing, looking ahead to another time, another place, or another way of being and relating. How many times have we heard this refrain in the past couple months: “I can’t wait until life gets back to normal”? I wonder. I wonder if the workaholism, constant motion, excess, waste, chaos, endless stimulus, noise and distraction has become so normalized that it serves as a drug du jour for human Angst? Has our antipathy toward interior stillness required frenetic activity as an anesthetic for contemplation, a practical hallucinogen for allaying profound fears and deep disconnection from what is most real?
Why would we choose to skip this liminal space, this perfect opportunity for being still? This sacramental invitation to draw near, to listen, to enter fully into what is?
I am an advocate of what Eckhart Tolle calls “The Power of Now.” It is the sacrament of this moment, the blessed “is-ness,” or the potent presence that each being gives in praise of the One Who Is, that is, pure Being. Linear time is a construct, and our experience of its effects can be spiritually stultifying. We are much fuller beings when living in the present moment. The past is in a way, unreal, recreated in sensate memory with unending perspectival revision. The future is a mirage, a projection of our best aspirations, perhaps, but conceptual and elusively ethereal until it becomes the thick present. Both past and future titillate our imagination for re-creation or birthing anew, but neither is worthy of our full attention, our living breath. Only the inexhaustible potency of each NOW deserves our fullest participation.
“Behold the birds of the air …” Jesus admonished. “Consider the lilies of the field …”
—Matthew 6:26a, 28b
Behold how it is to live in this moment, to be content and fully alive just now. Nothing to regret, nothing to fear; just being here now, for sheer joy.
When we are in the presence of one who is completely here and now, intentionally mindful, totally tuned into this moment, we are beholding the heart of the Divine. When we receive one who is fully present, one who IS, we experience the potent energy of Love. We become Love for each other. We are in the Heart of the Beloved. We are Love. Just to be is the gift.
So, “I thank you God, for most this amazing Day!” Happy Birthday, Dear Sun! Today is the Best Day.
Today
by Mary OliverToday I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all of the voodoos of ambition
sleep.The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate-director and retreats coordinator