Episcopal

One part of the Jesus Way that has always appealed to me is that Jesus dealt with one person at a time.  He was present to those he was present to, if you know what I mean.  This idea of doing one thing at a time also appeals to me and I have, for some time, attempted to do it, often unsuccessfully, if truth be known.

Now when I eat, for example, I try to just eat.  I don’t read or listen to music.  I try to concentrate on my food and actually enjoy it by doing only that one thing at a time.  I also put the fork or spoon down after taking a bite of food.  I try to really enjoy the flavors and textures of the food. Now, I don’t always do that especially when eating with others when conversation takes place.  But I try as often as I remember!

I also have downloaded an app called ‘mindbell ‘that rings three tones ever hour starting at 6am and ending at 9pm.  Each time the bell rings I stop-literally stop-and watch my breath for the duration of the ringing.  This simple stopping during the day calms me some, I think.

If we wanted to we could live our entire lives this way.  We could reverse the steady drum beat of activity and try to just be present to what we are doing at the time.  Fact is during the summer, where we do slow down, we do this more often I think than other times of the year.  When at the beach with my grandchildren, for another example, they aren’t much for me multi-tasking.  When they want to be thrown around in the surf I’m not thinking about my next message at CCL or what I have to do tomorrow.  I’m concentrating on them.  And in doing so I’m enjoying the experience much more.

The world now calls this mindfulness.  There are magazines, web sites, gurus, teachers, retreats…heck I even do one myself called You Are Enough.  But all this activity is really, well, more activity isn’t it?  Do we really need workshops to learn how to be present to the present moment?  I have done messages on this before right?  We can’t fix the past, can’t predict the future…all we have is this moment, this one time in our lives when we are tossing our grandchildren around in the ocean.

What if we all committed to try to be in the moment more often.  Oh, we won’t be successful all the time, but we can be sometimes can’t we?   The rat race isn’t going away.  But if we work on we might be able to shoo the rats away occasionally.  It takes work, but it can be done.

If interested in mindfulness check out Mindful Magazine at www.themindfulmagazine.com or www.mindfulnessbell.org…

peace,

Kurt