--Emily, from "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder
Last summer I undertook an unusual spiritual practice. I
tried my best to pay attention, pay deep attention, to singular and sacred moments
in time. Moments that came. Moments I lived. Moments I loved. Moments that
ended, gone forever.
While training for my yearly Pan Mass Challenge, a long
distance August charity bike ride for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, I took one photo
of my bike every single time I went out for a ride. One snapshot for each
journey, from early May until late August. One image of my bicycle posed in
front of a landmark that embodied each journey, every single trip. At summer's
end I had a photo service organize those thirty moments into a poster, to
remind me what a great and fun and hard and adventurous and blessed time I had
riding through my life in the summer of 2018. What a gift from God that time
was, each and every minute, every second.
I wanted to realize that time somehow. To be awake and alive
to it. To really remember it. To be grateful to God for it, and to say
"Thank you!"
There's a photo of my bike on the banks of the Mississippi
River in Minneapolis,
snapped on a lovely spring morning ride with my 12 year old Goddaughter BJ. An
image of my cycle leaning against an ancient player piano someone left by the
side of the road in Natick
on a hot July day. On the scorching
August Friday when I rode all the way to Rhode Island and back, there's a
picture of my bicycle leaning against a road sign: "Entering
Woonsocket". That was an epic trip! A snapshot of me at the end of the PMC
shows me holding my bike high over my head in joy, a ride marked by driving
rain the final 48 miles. Then one final photo, my bike leaning against a wooden
fence, with the blue and white surf of Nantucket Sound in the background.
I wish I could say I was just as attentive to the rest of my
life, to the more mundane and typical and routine moments too. Days like so
many other days: when I arise in the morning and drink my coffee and go to work
and write sermons and visit folks and eat meals and watch TV and then go to
bed. Because even in the midst of those seemingly everyday days, a beautiful and
miraculous life is still unfolding, if I 'd only realize it. If I'd only see,
really see: the smile of my co-worker Jose who greets me each weekday morning with
grace and care. Nature all around me: a bright yellow sunrise, gorgeous
colorful leaves on the trees, or an unexpected November snowstorm blanketing
the world. How about hot coffee, smoky
and delicious? Or the people who love me, the folks I love?
I need to pay attention more to my one life. We need to pay
attention more to this life, appreciate it, never take it for granted,
especially as mortals, we who live lives that will not go on forever, that instead
have an expiration date. So maybe the spiritual question for life is this clear
and simple: are we paying attention to the divine and God given moments we live,
we are given? Really, really enjoy days
and hours and minutes and seconds, being fully within that time. Time that
comes. Time that goes, never to return.
Here's a Thanksgiving Day challenge. When you sit down at
your table, take a moment and look around, really look into, the faces of those
gathered together and then dare to thank God or thank the universe for gifting
you with that exact minute and those exact people. Savor the rich food: the
smells, the tastes, the memories these evoke of holidays past. Because this one day will be unlike any day
that has ever happened before or will ever happen again. Your precious son or daughter will grow up
and go off to college. Your sometimes annoying cousin will one day not be able
to make it back east for a visit. Even if the turkey is dry or the rolls are
burnt or a political squabble breaks out, what a gift this time will be, all of
it, every single tick of the clock.
If only we would pay attention. Then we humans might
actually realize life while we live it. Every...every moment. Happy Thanksgiving.
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