I know that I have nothing but the here and now. The past is gone and the future is not yet. It is only today that I really have. And yet, my consciousness wherein my mind and memory reside, also tells me that I am more than my here and now. I have a past that brought me to where I am today. I have a future to fashion out with the help of my mind and imagination.
With my mind, my memory, and my imagination, I can see beyond what my eyes can see and hear beyond my ears can hear. With the eyes of my mind, I can see beyond the stars. With the ears of my imagination, I can hear the hymn of the universe. With the feelings in my heart, I can touch the ineffable. I can look at the past to learn and shape out the rest of my journey into the future. Often though, I get distracted by the many tasks of the present. There are simply too many things to do, places to see, stories and conversations to hear, food and pleasures to taste, people and things to touch. I get bogged down in the busy-ness of the here and now. In the process, I forget that I was born for greater things.
I love mornings. I love to see the sun slowly creeping up the horizon to start a new day. I love the peace and quiet just before everything and everyone else start stirring. I love the freshness of the morning breeze and the newness of its dew. In the stillness and the quiet, just before everything else wakes up, I sit in silence and solitude to encounter Him who fashioned my mind and my memory, my heart and my soul. In praise for another day. In gratitude for yet another 24 hours to enjoy His blessings. In deep gratefulness for the life I enjoy. In prayer to be gentler, kinder, more loving and more forgiving. In prayer to see to hear and to touch and to taste beyond what my senses tell me.
Meditation is a practice common to all religious and spiritual traditions. Today, even the secular and scientific are discovering the value and the virtue behind this practice. Mindfulness, they call it now. And there are apps available online for mindfulness. But even before the Internet, there was prayer. Instant connection guaranteed.
Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
~ Psalm 139
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village,
where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.
She had a sister named Mary,
who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.
But Martha was distracted by her many tasks;
so she came to him and asked,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?
Tell her then to help me.”
But the Lord answered her,
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things;
there is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part,
which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42