Skip to main content

Enjoy the Moments that Come

Assuming Covid-19 has not hit your home, are you able to appreciate the delicious moments in your day?

Coffee still tastes like coffee.
The song of the birds is still there in the morning.
A warm blanket still feels cozy.

It is difficult, as the stories of danger and fear swirl around us. We do not know what is coming tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day.

And so to appreciate the good moments when they come takes some mindfulness, intention.

There is a parable, often attributed as Buddhist, that speaks to this:

A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. He runs, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he catches hold of a wild vine and swings himself over the edge. The tiger sniffs at him from above. Terrified, the man looks down to where, far below, another tiger paces, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little begin to gnaw away at the vine. The man sees a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucks the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tastes!

Strawberry Tattoo, Jen Carroll

We have a constant reminder now of our fragile we are, and how precious every day is. Every day we are not sick. Every day we are alive. They are gifts. If we can still taste the strawberry, we should enjoy the pleasure.

We are being forced to live with tremendous uncertainty about our own lives, and about the fate of the world. What we can control is limited. Do all the things you can to keep you and your loved ones safe. If it is possible, stay at home. Wash your hands, repeatedly. Be careful with what comes into your home.

But then ... taste the strawberry. This moment will not come again. Savor every moment you can.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James.  Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f

The Most Controversial Thing I'll Write All Year

Back when you were a kid, you learned a lesson. It was wrong. And it's time for you to unlearn it. You learned that you were responsible for other people's feelings. Not that you should care about other people's feelings. (You should.) Not just that you should be sensitive to other people's feelings. (You should.) But you were taught that you were actually responsible for other people's feelings. It happens in almost all homes, even the loving ones. In abusive homes, it's more blatant. If Dad is unhappy, you get hit. So you learn that it is actually your responsibility to keep him happy, or there would be consequences. But even in non-abusive homes, it happened. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.  You are not responsible for other people's feelings. That's their job. And in fact, you are crossing their boundary if you try to control their feelings. They get to decide how they feel about something, not you. They may decide that you