Daily Dose (Aug 1 – 4)

Tuesday —
This week, our reminder is from the tribal chief’s talk with the children about the colonial officials who visited them. “They miss so much of the joy of today all around them… They miss much of the present time, because all they care about is the 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.”
That last paragraph alone, could be our prayer for the week.
I take to heart E.B. White’s reminder, “Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.”
You see, savoring puts me smack dab in the middle. In the midst of the Here and Now.
There, I am able to choose…
To be open.
To be curious.
To be willing to be surprised by joy.
To be fully alive.
And yes, to be available, to let that light spill in a broken world.
It’s interesting that I’m often asked what I do (or did or accomplished), but not what I’ve savored. Or tasted with joy. Or when I’ve laughed or cried.
This is one of my favorites from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, so let’s give Annie Dillard the last word. “Thomas Merton wrote, ‘there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.’ There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock–more than a maple–a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”
Wednesday —
“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.” Tribal Chief to the children in the village.
It reminds me of an Iris Murdoch quote, “There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.” When I use this in workshops, it is a quote that often gets pushback. “Of course, there is a beyond, otherwise, what’s the point?” people will tell me.
And I smile, remembering the church of my childhood and the insistence that eternity (and our standing or station there) was the only motivator for the way we lived and loved. I was asked frequently as a boy, “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?”
It occurs to me that I was never once asked what I would do, if I lived today.
I am learning to listen for (and to hear) the invitation to embrace the sacrament of the present moment. Yes. I can live, knowing that each moment is infused with, diffused with, the sacred (with the holy). (Even if it may not be easy to “see”.)
An awareness which allows me to embrace each moment like the little boy who said to his momma, “Momma listen, but this time with your eyes.”
To be here. Now.
Meaning that the beyond (or the future or eternity or heaven) is not my motivation. I choose to embrace the sacred in front of me…
To be sure… Easier said than done. But no one said it would be easy. Just worth it.
In my mind tonight, the words of Dougie MacLean’s This love will carry.
It’s a thin line that leads us and keeps a man from shame
And dark clouds quickly gather along the way he came
There’s fear out on the mountain and death out on the plain
There’s heartbreak and heart-ache in the shadow of the flame
(But) this love will carry.
This love will carry me I know this love will carry me
Yes. This love–this song of sufficiency–awakens creativity, love, passion, gentleness, helpfulness, caring, kindness, tenderness, restoration and a shoulder to lean on (for crying or for dancing, depending on the mood at the time).
And this love, this song, is grounded in Hineini (Hebrew “Here I Am”)
On this day may I be present to the Miracle of being alive.
May I reach out to those who are suffering and may I use my voice as a force for good.
May I have the courage to do what is right, not what is easy.
May I have the strength to shine a light in the darkness.
May I not distance myself from myself. (Joanne Fink)
Thursday —
“Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted—a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul,” Rabbi Harold Kushner reminds us.
Ah yes… but sometimes, we don’t (or can’t) see.
In his book, Testimony, Jon Ward writes about his journey from the paradigm of a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. “I missed out on stuff that was deemed to be sort of inferior or subpar, substandard, below us, which in fact has been the stuff I found to be very meaningful and fulfilling in my life. That more embodied way of being in the world is like a faith that’s more about loving your neighbor and loving the world. To me, that’s—one of my great regrets is that it took me so long to love the world, because it was so deeply ingrained in me to move through the world as if there’s toxic poisons everywhere. And there’s a lot of joy in loving the creation.”
Yes. Joy in loving the creation. I can relate. Learning (or the permission to see) that this ordinary moment can be a container of grace. And embracing the joy that comes to life, seeing this ordinary moment as a hiding place for the holy. What the Celts called ‘thin places’, places when and where the sacred is almost palpable.
Relishing. The gift to be here now, the miracle of the sacred present. 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.”
I’m smiling big.
Speaking of loving creation, some of you may have seen and savored the full moon this week (the Sturgeon Moon). The good news is that there’s another this month, called a Blue Moon because it’s the second full moon within the same month (Aug. 30). And this does my heart good: With moon gazing recognized by some as both an ancient health remedy as well as a modern-day antidote to anxiety and stress, you can think of August as a chance to “glow up” (just sayin’). (Thanks to Axios for the story.)
Let’s give Brian Doyle the final word, “The sheer roaring energy of things is stunning, miraculous, holy, a prayer, inexplicable, I give up. There is no word eloquent enough for the vast passion of living things.”
Friday —
“Needless to say, church isn’t the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, any place, and to anybody… If we weren’t blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.” Frederick Buechner reminds us.
‘Tis true. However, in order to see, slow (slowing down) is indispensable. The gift of pause.
There is space for a paradigm shift when we’re not running, hurrying, rushing by the moment.
I love the way John Muir reframed “hiking” as an opportunity to pause, to see, to savor. Not as an assignment, but as a “re-seeing”.
“I don’t like either the word (hike) or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains—not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”
I like that. So, when someone asks you what you “did” today, tell them, “I sauntered a wee bit.”
And this from my friends at Franciscan Media
“Sometimes the demands that are placed upon us—which are often self-inflicted demands—fuel expectations that mysteriously bind themselves to us. We become bonded to a false reality rooted in lack, and therefore become blinded to an unfolding reality that is filled with divine gifts that are to be enjoyed, big or small. What is the narrative in your head that pulls you away from enjoying today’s grace and gifts? May this prayer help inspire you to release that narrative and enjoy the gifts and grace of the day.”
Prayer to take into our weekend…
Open me up to the magic and possibility
of living within what my dear friend calls
“the grace of the day”—
where every gift is savored for as long as it lasts,
like being lost in a song, swimming in its layers,
fully present, strangely free, wanting nothing more from life
than dancing into the next tune.
All is a gift from you for me.
Thank you, Lord.
“Needless to say, church isn’t the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, any place, and to anybody… If we weren’t blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.” Frederick Buechner reminds us.
‘Tis true. However, in order to see, slow (slowing down) is indispensable. The gift of pause.
There is space for a paradigm shift when we’re not running, hurrying, rushing by the moment.
I love the way John Muir reframed “hiking” as an opportunity to pause, to see, to savor. Not as an assignment, but as a “re-seeing”.
“I don’t like either the word (hike) or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains—not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre’, ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”
I like that. So, when someone asks you what you “did” today, tell them, “I sauntered a wee bit.”
And this from my friends at Franciscan Media
“Sometimes the demands that are placed upon us—which are often self-inflicted demands—fuel expectations that mysteriously bind themselves to us. We become bonded to a false reality rooted in lack, and therefore become blinded to an unfolding reality that is filled with divine gifts that are to be enjoyed, big or small. What is the narrative in your head that pulls you away from enjoying today’s grace and gifts? May this prayer help inspire you to release that narrative and enjoy the gifts and grace of the day.”
Prayer to take into our weekend…
Open me up to the magic and possibility
of living within what my dear friend calls
“the grace of the day”—
where every gift is savored for as long as it lasts,
like being lost in a song, swimming in its layers,
fully present, strangely free, wanting nothing more from life
than dancing into the next tune.
All is a gift from you for me.
Thank you, Lord.
Prayer for our week…
May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.
May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
John O’Donohue
Photo… “Terry, Sunflower time. I belong to a photography club and we met at a farm near by. I’m from New Bern NC,” Mary ONeilll