This present moment

How can we describe the moments where we feel the stillness permeate our bones and yet understand that we are moving forward?

Like a sailboat all unfurled, gliding across the water, its substance holds it and anchors it while the invisible wind pushes it forward. Such is the present moment.

Like peripheral vision we are aware that something has shifted, but if we move our gaze, if we wander, the moment will pass.

Recently this knowing hit me as my brother and I drove along the coast at sunset. The golden haze of light illuminated each car on the highway and entered each pore of skin. Time had stopped. Yet, magically, we all moved forward.

And again it landed as I watched an inchworm traverse the violet, fluffy orb of a garden flower. The substance of a memory held and the movement of the worm, slow and deliberate, surprised me. Words echoed, no they rippled, the effect bounced back again and again, with the cadence of my tiny green friend. "Amanda, just because you can handle something  doesn't mean that you should."

In this present moment I look and see that the "can" and "should" have something to do with those we carry and how we surrender. I see that surrender means giving up control, and that we are smaller than we once thought, but that we are a part of something bigger.

A cowboy told me, "Amanda, just because you can handle something doesn't mean that you should." And the moment stuck, the present stayed, and it is reverberating back to me now in the silence and peace of stillness.