Living in the Moment

Ryan and Matthew

Living in the moment is hard to do---especially if you're the kind of person who is always planning their next "move". I used to be so much more focused about things which, I'm quite sure, made me uptight and anxious. Not that being focused on a particular task is a bad thing, just that focusing our lives right down to the very last detail takes all the spontaneity and joy out of the moment. It robs us of our enjoyment of the RIGHT NOW!

Alex

My 43rd birthday is fast approaching, and as I get older, and as my children grow up, I am reminded almost daily that I will never pass this way again. I will never again be able to seize that exact moment that I lost because I was too busy, too tired, too stressed-out, to be a part of what was happening right then and there.

Matthew

A really amazing and beautiful thing about children is that they don't have to try to live in the moment----they just do! It's as natural to them as breathing. Most children I know have a difficult time trying to put time into perspective because all they understand is right this minute. Sometimes as parents we become exasperated in attempting to explain for the hundredth time that dinner will be ready "in an hour" or we'll be there "soon" or you need to finish up "right away". But, oh, that we adults could throw out the window our concept of time, of the urgent, the necessary, just for....."a little while". If we could learn to play with abandon like our children. If we could learn to get lost in the now.

Alex

"This Day"

by Point of Grace

This day is fragile ~ soon it will end

And once it has vanished, it will not come again

So let us love with a love pure and strong

Before this day is gone

This day is fleeting when it slips away

Not all our money can buy back this day

So let us pray that we might be a friend

Before this day is gone

This day we're given is golden ~ Let us show love

This day is ours for one moment ~ Let us sow love

This day is frail ~ it will pass by

So before it's too late to recapture the time

Let us share love, let us share God

Before this day is gone

Planet Earth

HAPPY EARTH DAY


Do something beautiful today. Plant a tree or some flowers. Commit to a recycling plan for your home. Hang your laundry on the line instead of using the dryer. Talk a walk in nature and as you do listen to the sounds, see the sights, breathe in the fresh air, so you will remember that the earth IS worth saving.

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." ~ ~~Attributed to Chief Seattle, 1855

Laundry Lines

Today has been such a lovely Spring day. The sun has been doing its thing since early this morning and there has been a gentle wind most of the day. In other words: a perfect day to hang out the washing.



There is something immensely therapeutic about going through the motions of hanging clothes on a line. It is a gentle, soothing, almost spiritual act. The morning is the best time for this particular activity because the world is mostly quiet, the only sounds being the chirping of the little birds in the backyard trees and the occassional caw from the impatient crows waiting for their morning handout of bread crusts.

When I stand at the laundry line with a basket of clothes at my feet, time seems, not to stand still really, but to just not matter very much. All that interests me is the rhythmic bending, pinning, bending, pinning. And I'm always just a little sad when the last shirt or sock is hung on the line and it's time to go inside. But, too, I feel relaxed, peaceful, as though I've just spent a sacred moment in the presence of the Divine.

On some of my travels with my family to the Amish country in Pennsylvania and Ohio, I would sometimes catch a glimpse of the sturdy handmade clothing pinned to the lines near the large white farmhouses. The dark blues, purples, mauves, greens and blacks flapping in the breeze painted such a lovely picture---not just one of simplicity, but of industry, a life of integrity, and joy.

I think it is an art to find beauty in the simple pleasures that life affords us and that we so often take for granted, simple pleasures like the smell of line-dried sheets. And sometimes, there is nothing more lovely to behold nor more pleasing to the eye than a load of clean laundry pinned to a line by my own two hands, drying in the early morning sunshine.