For the second time, I owe the title of a blogpost to Father
Gregory Boyle. Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship is the latest collection of stories from his work
with Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation programme in the
world. It is a beautiful and challenging read. In one particular chapter, Boyle
speaks about the necessity of embracing the current moment, rather than always
rushing on to the next one.
This is something that I am astonishingly bad at.
I live in the next moment almost all of the time. I am always
waiting for a time that isn’t now for something to happen that hasn’t happened
yet: for my daughter to sleep through the night, for the day when I’m not
tired, for a job I really love that gives me meaning and purpose. I am constantly
on the lookout for the thing that will complete me, or at least bring a greater
sense of satisfaction than I currently have.
That isn’t to say that I’m not happy – there is so much in my life
that I have to rejoice in –but I am restless. Part of this restlessness is, I’m
sure, due to life stage. The transition from working full time to full time
mumming it has not been an easy one for me, and I find it hard to dwell
happily in the present moment when the present moment often consists of
mundanity, tantrums and various bodily functions. But, I do not
think restlessness is only due to life with two small children. It is a way of
thinking, and a way of life, that I seem unable to shake off.
And yet these past few weeks I have been trying. I have been choosing
to dwell in the present moment and to celebrate it rather than holding out for
a future moment that might never happen. This does not come easily to me, but
children are great teachers (or at least Jesus seemed to think so) and I have
been letting my two year old school me in the art of being fully here.
On
Monday we walked to the library. This should take 15 minutes, 10 if you walk at
my usual hurried pace, but I had let Sarah walk and so we were not going to get there
any time soon. Sarah, like most two year olds, stops for every, single thing
that interests her: tree, leaf, flower, crack in pavement, lamp post.
Everything. Each thing is to be seen and held and marvelled at. And most of the
time, this does my head in because, most of the time, I have somewhere else I
think I need to be, some other moment I am trying to rush off to. But Sarah
does not live life like this. She lives life in the present. And to her, most
of the time, the present is a thing of glory and of wonder.
During our overly long walk to the library I was about to lose my
rag when I spotted a sign in a window that said, “Live the life you love.” And
in that moment, God spoke to me gently and reversed the words, “No. Love the
life you live.” For many of us, we do not choose the life that we have. We do
not choose the family or postcode we are born into. We do not choose our circumstances
or opportunities. It is an impossibility – as much as the world might tell us
otherwise – to simply start living a life that we love, to have the dream job,
and salary, and family. Thus, to have the life we always wanted to live - that we
would love to live – is beyond us. And yet, what is not beyond us is to
choose to be present in the life that we have, the life that we are already
living, and celebrate the joy of it, savouring every pink tinged leaf, and
white striped feather.
Boyle puts it this way, “If
your anchor is not centred in today, then you’ll blink and miss the delight of
this very moment.” This is not to say, of course, that there aren’t some moments
which are not delightful, that there aren’t seasons of pain and sorrow, but it
is to say that the present is a moment in which to seek joy, rather than
assuming that it is only available in the future. The present is also a moment
in which we can choose whether or not to acknowledge God. Whether or not to
embrace his presence and his goodness. Whether or not to tilt our faces upwards
to the sun and say thank you.
On that afternoon wander in the vague direction of the library
with the autumn sun golden above the rooftops, I was able – as I so often am
not – to do this: to stop and look back towards Sarah, with her hands and
pockets crammed full of coloured leaves, and love the life I was living and the
gifts I had been given. To love that moment, and to live fully inside it, without waiting for something better to eclipse it.
Here.
Now.
This.
