Key Moments
Earlier this week, I enjoyed an hour of conversation with a dear friend, someone with whom I don’t connect nearly enough. Despite deep losses in her life, I’m always moved by her centeredness. She has fostered the ability to be present and open to whatever life provides, whether it be an experience of pain or of elation. She would be the first to say she does not always live in the moment. She can spin out like the rest of us (I can bear witness to this!). Yet by living in the present and opening herself to the divine, she has discovered a depth of joy in her life that transcends her pain.
“We need to be moved by the pain of all of the suffering. But it is important that we are not paralyzed by it. It makes us value life because we understand life is very precious, life is very brief, it can be extinguished in a single instant.”
These are the words of Chenxing Han, a Buddhist teacher and author, as quoted in The New York Times. Though she was speaking in response to the recent mass shootings, her wisdom reaches far beyond those tragedies. We’ve been surrounded for more than two years by examples of the fragility of life. Mass shootings, police shootings, an epidemic of drug overdoses and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In my mind, I understand both Han’s words and my friend’s joyful centeredness. As a priest, I’ve preached about Easter and resurrection while burying people who were too young to be dead. I’ve dedicated my ministry to revealing God’s constant presence in everyday things: bread, wine, water. The theology that guides my ministry tells me every moment of life is a gift from God.
But do I live this way? I rush from one commitment to the next. I work through my to-do list, multi-tasking to get as much done as possible. I count the success of a day based on what I accomplished. I spend time reliving some event from the past, wishing I could change it. Or my mind anticipates an upcoming event I want to control. Even during my daily prayer and meditation my brain leaps from thought to thought. Too often, I do not live in the present or give thanks for the gift of life.
So, I’m fortunate to have a friend who reminds me life is precious and that joy can be found in the moment. The author and theologian Frederick Buechner sums it up well in his memoir, Now and Then.
Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. … Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly. … If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
