LIVING IN THE PRESENT REQUIRES STANDING STILL, Opening Our Eyes and Accepting What is
Cheryl Lloyd
30 May, 2004

Reading 1
The Vacation, by Wendell Berry
Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
A moving picture of the moving river
Upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
His vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
Preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

Reading 2
The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Opening Our Eyes
I must say that within the past few months leading up to my ordination and even after my ordination with our son’s graduation from high school I have been caught up in a whirlwind of activity—I know all of us can relate to this—going from one activity to the next—especially at this time of year-- Never really being in the moment because we’re thinking about the next thing and then the next….and sometimes you can’t even remember what you have even done!

And I actually found myself thinking back to our trip to Alaska when my husband and I went salmon fishing. I’ve never been fishing, so I was proud of myself. After standing in the river for fours hours, feeling the cold water as it passed over my waders [by the way, waders don’t really come in my size so by the time I got mine on, they had rather deep cuffs—right under my armpits. We certainly do have some fine pictures of this vacation!

I decided I had enough so I started walking back while my husband decided to switch from salmon and try his luck by going for trout. He said he’d catch up with me, but I reached the end of the trail and he still hadn’t arrived. I asked someone, “Which way to the parking lot?” She said, “The camp parking lot?” “Yes, thanks,” I said, and followed her pointing finger.

Now, when we parked our car that morning, I hadn’t noticed that there were several parking lots—The Pink Salmon parking lot, the King Salmon parking lot, the Coho Salmon parking lot and so on. Which one had we parked in? I’d seen no signs that morning. I hadn’t even noticed what model car we’d rented! Oh, I wandered from one parking lot to another for almost two hours--plunking along in my roomy rubber waders. My eyes were not open that morning—at least not for my surroundings. What were they looking at? Where was I? What was I thinking? Whatever was going on with me that morning, I wasn’t where I needed to be. I wasn’t in the present—[just the way I have felt about the last few weeks]--I thought then of something a friend had sent me at the bottom of an e-mail. You’ve probably read it too—but that doesn’t make it any less true. She wrote, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow hasn’t come. Today is a gift—that’s why they call it the present.”

Actually, I thought it was cute when I read it, but I realize it speaks a truth that is so much more important than its glibness might suggest.

In the poem we read this morning, Mary Oliver writes, “I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields…”

I think we’d all like to believe we have the kind of intentionality Mary Oliver has. And yet, we often let our minds take us elsewhere. In fact, it is usually around this time of spring that I find myself jumping ahead to the summer and then even to the fall—especially this year when my son will be leaving for college. And he only just graduated!! Somehow I have not only shortened spring, but the summer as well!

I have closed my eyes to what is in front of me—the beauty and the precious moments that are right in front of me. And, there are weeks left, even months before summer is over!
I mean Weeks when I could be falling down in the grass, kneeling down in the grass, strolling through the fields. I have let the time slip away before I got to have it.

When I arrived at the river that morning, I was like the cameraman in the first reading—going through the motions of being on vacation—taking the picture, but not being in it. Many of us are so caught up in accomplishing a task that we never let ourselves appreciate the process. I was going to have an adventure and catch my first fish—if it didn’t take too long. But, where was I that morning? Where was the river?

What kind of vehicle had transported us? Got me… I suspect, I was anxious that morning. Worried, perhaps, about killing a fish.

Worried about falling in the river and dying of hypothermia before I could get out of my waders. It’s hard to say exactly where my mind was but chances are pretty good that it was taken up with some version of fear and anxiety. That’s my guess. Type the words fear and anxiety into your favorite computer search engine some time.

You’ll be astonished at the advice, the cures, the medicine, the therapy, the groups, the research that is all centered around helping people recognize, explore, deal with and even cure their fear and anxiety.

The thing that I find so curious about all this is that I have a dear friend in my life who has had all her worst fears confirmed with the loss of her health. And, just like the heroine in all the tritest, pathetic, most manipulative novels, she became—of all of us—the person least afraid, most present, most appreciative of the moment.

We couldn’t take our eyes off her. When she had to have her wig fitted, she made a party of it and she looked beautiful. She couldn’t stop talking about her painting and how much she loved painting. We began to invent reasons to get together and to be with her.

At first it was to comfort her but later it was because with her simple joy in living, she was fun to be around. She stopped complaining or finding fault with anything. Do you know how restful being around that is?—to be with someone who loves things the way they are and who never worries about why they aren’t another way? A “better” way? It’s amazing.

I had to talk to her about this new way that she was and she understood me immediately. “The truth is I finally faced something so huge that everything else I worried about looked tiny next to it,” she said. “So, I just stopped worrying. I get frightened a day or two before my next blood test but there’s no way I’m going to lose whole days and weeks I could be living just because I’d rather be sitting around shivering with fear.

“Not a chance.”

This conversation reminded me of something I had read in the book, Tuesdays With Morrie—the autobiography about Morrie Schwartz, a retired Brandeis professor, dieing of Lou Gerick’s disease. One of his student’s visits Morrie said to him” The truth is, Mitch, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. I’m going to repeat that again, Morrie said. The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. “Did you think much about death before you got sick, Mitch asked?” Morrie smiled and said no.

I was like everyone else. Nobody really believes they’re going to die. “Why is it so hard to think about dying and Morrie replied, “because most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep—doing things we automatically think we have to do.

Well the truth is, Morrie said, “if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time—you might not be as ambitious as you are.” The things you spend so much time on—all this work you do might not seem as important. We get too involved in materialistic things or in constant activities, which don’t satisfy us.

The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted. That’s what Morrie said,—

Why can’t we see the blessings that surround us? Do we really need to face death to pay attention to each moment? Why do we let anxiety fuel our engines, driving us to think always of the “shoulds” and the “what ifs?” Why does it always seem as though we are running on a treadmill?

Are we that afraid to stand still? When we become lost in the memories of the past or pre-occupation about the future, we forget the power of paying attention and how, without attention, we live on the surface, and our lives lack passion and exuberance.

In any discussion about why we avoid living in the present or seeing what is really before us, it is important to face the fact that sometimes, what is before us seems unbearable. Sometimes we are in so much pain that even when we do look, we can’t see clearly. Sometimes great things—even unexpected miracles, no matter how small they are can be standing right in front of us but we can’t see them.

I recall the story of Hager and her son Ishmael from the book of Genesis. Because Sarah, the wife of Abraham, was barren, she offered Abraham her Egyptian maidservant, Hager as a surrogate.

Hager bore Ishmael, making him the first born of Abraham. Miraculously, Sarah found herself with child some 14 years later. “Hager and Ishmael must go for Isaac is our son and I am your wife. You must tell them to leave!” The next day Hager and Ishmael left Abraham’s camp. They were walking for miles in the dry hot desert and soon they ran out of water.

Hager was tired and frightened, lost and alone. Ishmael was dying. Hager laid her only child down under a bush because she could not bear to watch him die before her eyes. After she set his body down, she burst into tears. Suddenly an angel of God called out to her and told her not to be afraid. “God will not let Ishmael die, for he has a glorious future before him. Go take him now, and lead him by the hand. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.” The bleak picture that had been before her melted away in a single moment of clear sight. She ran to the well and brought Ishamel water, and he was revived. The miracle that God performed for Hager and Ishamel in this story is very subtle. The story does not say, “And God placed a well in Hager’s path.” The story says, “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.

The miracle God actually performed was to open Hager’s eyes so she could see what had been standing right her all along. The well had been there from the start, but she was too delirious and panicked to see it.

Fear, especially fear of loss, can blind us. Virtually everyone here has suffered some kind of loss—whether it be the loss of a job, the end of a career, the loss of a relationship, the death of a friend or family member, or the loss of one’s health. Some of you may be going through one or even several of these losses right at this moment. It is so hard to see the exciting opportunities before us--Ishamael didn’t know he was to head a great nation, for instance—when we are haunted by fear. And yet, if we can put that fear aside instead of ignoring it, we can realize that loss is only half the experience.

The other half is opportunity, excitement, a new freedom.

While not all pain is so conveniently divided into good and bad, all pain is smaller when faced—larger when avoided. The lesson of my friend who had cancer is, it is only when you stand right up to what is haunting you, that you can be free and open to pleasure and to opportunity.

But to live well is to risk loving—to not be afraid of letting go. Some of you might have seen the movie Shadowlands about the life of C.S. Lewis as he went from being a somewhat arrogant intellectual to a man who allowed himself to love, who became willing to pay the price of love. He wrote,To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal….It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. And yet of all the risks we take in this world, perhaps this is the most difficult.

I wish there were instructions for how to live in the present and how to love more fully-to live with passion-There is no easy answer. There are no recipes to follow. But I can tell you that the ingredients are actually within all of us. And that is the commitment or let us say a behavioral shift to live with intentionality-- –To not let our engines be fueled with fear and anxiety or distrust.

Buddhist teacher and writer, Jack Kornfield says, “When we let go of yearning for the future, preoccupation with past, and strategies to protect the present, there is no where left than where we are.”

Living in the present means paying attention to what is right in front of us and seeing without the lens of panic or fear. It means becoming apart of your experience, good or bad. It is about accepting what is. It is about taking the risk to be vulnerable.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Will it be about merely taking the picture, or will it be about seeing the grasshopper the one that flung herself on the grass before it flew away? Go in peace-and enjoy this day-Amen

Benediction
Look to this day and stand still--enjoy the moments-seek beauty and savor what is good-And in these moments… may you find peace in your hearts.