HOPE - Dec 2009
Hope for me is sometimes about some external event, such as no red lights all the way home. But, I’m know I’m a better person when I hope that I can be a source of change. Maybe, I’ll have more patience at each red light, all the way home. Sometimes the best hope is found within.
I recently had the privilege of having dinner with Thomas Moore, author of the best seller, "Care of the Soul," amongst other thought-provoking books. I had invited Moore to be the keynote speaker at a conference for Unitarian Universalist ministers. He said many interesting things to my 400 colleagues, but it's what he said to me during dinner that was really surprising.
He essentially cast aside one of the oldest teachings of many religions: Be in the moment. I've preached on this teaching many times, encouraging anyone willing to heed the sage advice that being in the moment is the essence of a healthy spiritual life. It's the goal of many forms of meditation and prayer to seek a heightened form of mindfulness. It's where Christian, Jewish and Islamic mystics say we'll find God.
The teaching comes with the admonishment that hanging on to the past is for those unwilling to relinquish their anger, resentments, and regrets, while those who dream only of the future are trying to control what they cannot. Keeping our mind and heart in the present is the key to enjoying our life
free of such emotional baggage.
Yet, Moore, with a quick flippant remark, said "I love being in the past! That's where all my best memories are and where I always retreat." Slammed into first gear, I slowly recognized my love for being in the future and with a sudden release of pressure, realized he was saying something important, not flippant at all.
Several mornings a week I watch the sun rise over the Potomac while exercising at the gym in Old Town. I relish this act for the sun as metaphor of hope and what is to come that day. Yes, I'm a hopeful person, so it's natural for me to welcome a new day. I do enjoy dreaming about the future and get energized when planning for a future event, which is good because I'm planning worship services throughout the year. Why not accept this as my way of being in the world and stop pressuring myself to a restriction of the moment?
My answer comes in understanding that ancient teaching. The Buddhist core teaching in meditation is about being awake to the beauty and happiness that is present at any given moment. Too often we're asleep to that which truly gives us joy in life because we are focused on events yet to be or events long gone. This seems right to me. Yet, what Thomas Moore said also rings true.
The lesson for me is not being attached to the present, the past, or the future. Rather it is to be awake, to pay attention to the flow from one to the other, to the flow of time. In the flow of time I find a constant unfolding, a constant revelation about the past, the present, and the future.
While staying at his cabin at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau used to get up early and bathe in the pond as a spiritual discipline. "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me ... We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep."
As Thoreau notes, the dawn does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. Dawn will come, the question is: will we be awake to see it? The dawn is forever unfolding, we have a physical act of dawn each morning, but in essence each moment is a dawn coming over the horizon. I have a renewed desire to be awake to the moment, even while planning for the future and reminiscing about the past.
May you see the dawn in your new year, each moment as it unfolds.
