Present moment

Through a Door November 5 2009


I awoke today

Tears already streaming from my eyes.

What did I dream? I don’t remember.

Is the date I lost you

Engraved so deep in me

That I had just relived that moment in my sleep?

I was innocent before we met,

With no idea about the door

I’d enter once I’d known your love.

I can’t go back now to the other side,

But must continue here,

Knowing and yet missing you.

Love, like Eve’s apple,

Changed my way of knowing and of being.



Reflection: This present moment is all there is. We make up the rest, as has often been said. We imagine meanings for the past, and dream up possible future scenarios that have no relationship with reality. This morning, my tears simply were. I had no way to interpret them, to imagine possible causes or meanings. Each present moment, if lived attentively and deeply, changes us, transforms our spirit. This morning I awoke in a place – in the mountains of Tennessee -- with which I had been unfamiliar. My tears flowed, for old memories. I was also engaged in making new ones. In this way our life goes on – new memories overlaying and interweaving with ones from the past, with each new moment. In this way, we continually recreate ourselves.



The Present is My Friend November 1 2009

I look at others sometimes,

And tremble with my fear that their suffering may presage my fate.

I have no way of knowing.

But the Present is my friend.

It’s always simply here.

If I stay within its boundary

I am cushioned from the gang of pasts and futures

That my worried mind can conjure up, with all their ills.

In the present, my imagination rests.

My moments are all singular.

My two choices: to accept or struggle.

Accepting is the way to peace, while struggle causes pain.

Grateful, I decide: accept this moment, here and now, and live in love.