In Case You Need a Moment...
What’s the simplest gift I can offer this week? I found myself acknowledging how many words and messages have filled my ears and mind this week, and found myself wanting to offer the world a little less. So, perhaps this message today can be a gentle nudge to see the world fresh, if but for a moment. In case you need a moment today.
A 19th century priest named Bruno Lanteri (a kind and gentle mystic in that time period) wrote many wonderful things about the sacredness of joy. One I love about beginning again for the sake of joy is simply, “turn the page and begin again.”
The image of that is so tangible and perhaps doable, just for this one moment of your day, or perhaps of your week. Turn the page and, just for this moment, consider wonder.
Rabbi Joshua Heschel said, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
I don’t know how Rabbi Heschel (who lived and worked through the unimaginable horrors of World War II) was able to do this everyday, but I do think about how lovely it would be to not let life rob me of the energy for such a thing.
With the world around us in the state that it is, I longed today for even one simple moment. So I made a list of wonders, those things I’m astonished by, from this past week and am celebrating them here with you: the eagles that live in a tall tree on my road and have taken to soaring over my car as I drive to and fro; the literal air-filling fragrance of spring flowers that perfumed my walk to church; the sight of my teens and 25 of their classmates learning to swing dance together; the feeling of walking through a local greenhouse and noticing my nervous system downshift into peace; the remembrance of walking outside Wednesday night to a sky full of stars and, in the center of their light, a glowing half moon.
I needed a moment to turn the page, and this was enough.