Terry Hershey

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins

“I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live.”
Eugene O'Kelly (in his book, Chasing Daylight)

“Behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. Is-right now-in the midst of you-right here. By living in communion with the Creator, he showed us what is true for every creature, in every moment. In fact, I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart.”
Scott Russell Sanders

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
Henry Miller

“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
Steven Wright

“On the day of Judgment God will only ask one question: Did you enjoy my world?”
Traditional Jewish saying

“This tastes like heaven” my son Zach says, eating from a small bag of popcorn, picking out one kernel at a time.

We're at the base of Diamond Head, spending part of the afternoon in a farmers market on the east side of Oahu, Hawaii. These local markets are a smorgasbord for the senses. Kiosks of exotic flowers. Crimson, vermilion and port-wine red, yellows of sunshine and sulfur, Baltimore Oriole orange, and thundercloud blue. The air is suffused with the scent of coffee. And garlic. My arm is freckled with powdered sugar, a confetti from fresh beignets, just lifted from the griddle. I take a bite of a biegnet and a sip of Kona coffee.

I close my eyes.
My son is right.
This does taste like heaven.

Scott Russell Sanders observed that, “For the enlightened few, the world is always lit.” Which is another way of saying that the requirement for enlightenment is pretty straightforward: let yourself live like a kid.

I heard a lot about heaven in the church of my youth. Although, on balance, I heard a good deal more about hell. It was some calculated motivational tool to make heaven seem that much more appealing. What was clear was the objective: getting there. Heaven, that is. Trouble is, I was never much drawn to the heaven portrayed in those sermons of my youth. Because there was no movie preview about exactly what we'd be doing when we got there. And, what's really to enjoy about people (mostly old people) in white suits sitting around playing elevator musac? For a young boy, that had all of the enticement of a 24-hour Lawrence Welk special, with an all-accordion-choir.

Predictably, I was mostly frightened of hell. Heaven was used to soothe my regrets. So I could say, At least Im going to heaven, if I was asked, which I was, daily. But one thing was clear, heaven had nothing to do with today. Or the way I lived my life today.

In his book Too Small to Ignore, Wess Stafford (President of Compassion, compassion.com) tells a story from his childhood on the Ivory Coast of Africa. About a village visited by a convoy of French colonial officials for a government survey. Their questions had to do with “expectations of the future.” (Including numbers and size and growth and development.)

Stafford writes, “The chief and his tribal elders tried to explain to their exasperated visitors that they really didn't know the answers to those kinds of questions, because the future had not yet arrived. When the time came to pass, then the results would be apparent.” This, to be sure, made the officials less than pleased. And they left, in a huff.

That day, at dusk, the village gathered in the chief's courtyard. He said, “I want to talk to the children tonight.”

“We are not like them,” the chief said. “To them time is everything. . .the smaller that men can measure the day, the more angry they seem to be.”

“The present is now—the days we live today. This is God's gift to us. It is meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. The present will flow by us, of course, and become the past. That is the way of a river, and that is the way of time. The Frenchmen cannot wait for the future to arrive. They crane their necks to see around the bend in the river. They cannot see it any better than we can, but they try and try. For some reason, it is very important for them to know what is coming toward them. They want to know it so badly that they have no respect for the river itself. They thrash their way out into the present in order to see more around the bend.”

They miss so much of the joy of today all around them. Did you notice that as they stormed into our village, they didn't notice it is the best of the mango season?

Though we offered them peanuts, they did not even taste them.

They did not hear the birds in the trees or the laughter in the marketplace.

We touched them with our hands, but they did not really see us.

“They miss much of the present time, because all they care about is he unknowable, the future. . .The present is all we can fully know and experience, so we must.

“We must love each other. We must smell the hibiscus flowers. We must hear the singing of the weaverbirds and the grunts of the lions. We must taste with joy the honey and the peanut sauce on the rice. We must laugh and cry and live.”

Whether he knew it or not, the Village Chief took Jesus seriously.

Remember when Jesus said, “Behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” Meaning “is—right now—in the midst of you—right here.”

Meaning, this moment can be the “Sacrament of the Blessed Present,” this ordinary moment, a container of grace.

Meaning, that the visible and the invisible are one. The Celts called some places, 'thin places', places when and where the sacred is almost palpable.

“All of earth is crammed with heaven
And every bush a flame with God
But only those who see take off their shoes.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What's our alternative?

We can walk in reverence, taking off our shoes. Or we can tell ourselves that the kingdom is yet to be, somewhere in the future, something we are willing to give up today for. And we give up who we are today, for who we think we should be.

I experience this jarring disconnect while watching any celebrated event on TV. Like this past Super Bowl for example. (I'll refrain from reminding you that Seattle lost, and that the officials were part of a conspiracy meant to rob us from the ecstasy of victory. But no worries, I'm over it. Really. I just will never take another speaking job in Pittsburgh. Unless they pay through the nose.)

So I'm fixed on the sofa, suffering with my Seattle Seahawks, present to the moment (I use the verb with license, as I was multi-tasking, checking email, reading the newspaper and talking on the phone). While watching the game, we are continuously peppered with advertisements (teasers) about future programming. Each program described as the event or program or episode “we've all been waiting for.”

And to think that this game was what we had been waiting for. How could we have been so wrong headed? Apparently, life doesn't officially begin until “the next thing.” (Mental note: Add this information to my list on my Blackberry, so that I'm sure not to miss life when it happens.)

“When you coming home, dad?” “I don't know when,
But we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then.”
—Harry Chapin

I was helped this past month by reading Eugene O'Kelly's book, Chasing Daylight. It is a book about the last three months of his life.

O'Kelly reinforces what we all know to be true. This moment, I have a choice. I can receive the gift of life and embrace it, and immerse myself in it. Or, continue to live in oblivion, asleep, distracted, and waiting. And in the process, we bury the very things that might set us free (borrowing from Stephen Levine). Such as stopping, stillness, listening, hearing, tasting, touching, seeing, smelling and embracing.

In last week's episode of The West Wing, CJ Craig (White House chief of staff) is wired, tense and distracted. Her love interest shows up, middle of the workday, at her White House office, “to take her for a walk.” She consents (but not without a fight, you know, so much “to do”). On the walk, she fidgets and asks, “So, what was so important, taking this walk.”

He says, “Just to see.”

“Well,” she tells him, “this is not the day for it.”

Listen to Henry David Thoreau's two-cents. “Nothing can be more useful to a man (or woman) than a determination not to be hurried.”

Sure, I want to live this moment mindful of the sacred, but this is not the day for it.

As if there is a special day for it?

In our western mindset, living in the present becomes a staged event. Staged to be “spiritual.” As if this is something we must orchestrate. Or arrange. And we sit stewing in the juices of our self-consciousness. Am I present? What am I doing right or wrong? All the while, missing the point.

A Hasidic Rabbi was interrupted by one of his followers while he was tending his garden, “What would you do, rabbi,” the student asked, “if you knew the messiah was coming today?” Stroking his beard and pursing his lips, the rabbi replied, “Well, I would continue to water my garden.”

Its about making the choice: to receive.

To be open.

To be available.

To be curious.

To be willing to be surprised by joy.

To fall back into outstretched arms. The name is not as important as trusting that the arms are there.

Last week I sat with friends on a beach south of Sarasota, Florida. We watched the sun set behind the stark flat-line horizon of the Gulf of Mexico. We were the only people on the beach. Just above the horizon, the orb, a perfect circle, appeared to hold, now incandescent on a slate blue screen. It is so vivid, this picture, it takes on the appearance of a special effect. The sun is the color of embers at the bottom of a bonfire. As if on cue, porpoises scroll through the water, not even twenty feet from shore, breaking the sun's shimmer imprinted on the water's surface.

There is nothing gained by cataloguing such a moment. I need to let it be. I take my shoes off.

Zach is standing on our Hawaii hotel balcony, looking out at the ocean.

“Time for bed, son.”

“I cant.”

“Why?”

“First I need to say goodnight to the world.”

This he knew, in his bones; this ordinary moment is a sacrament. A container for grace.