Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Home Visit in the Mountains

Two physical therapist and a nurse on a home visit, in a field. Feli our Quechua translator, Tajel and Stephanie (PTs) and our patient. He was paralyzed at the age of 14 and is wheelchair bound. We evaluated him under a tin roof while it was raining. Then his aunt brought us hand made cheese and toasted corn. The family farm, chakra (in Quechua) The cute donkey After our home visit we walked through Quinua Pampa a city up at 10,000 ft.

I pick my boogers, therefore I GO

When I was unemployed and still trying to figure out what direction my life supposed to take, I spent a lot of time reading blogs. I don't know why I typed that sentence in past tense. I'm not currently employed within my profession, I will probably always be trying to figure out what direction to take, and I still  spend a lot of time reading blogs. This week I was reading one of my favorite writers, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, when I came across something that was written by Jamie's husband, whom she likes to call "El Chupacabra." This post is called "Therefore GO" and can be read by clicking here. El Chupacabra points out that the verbs "to go" or "to come" appear more often in the Bible than any of the typical Christianese verbs (eg. to love, to pray, to worship etc...). El Chup talks about how our story is a story of movement. God doesn't usually pick a person out of the mass of humanity and then tell them to stay...

(Some) Things Are Different Now

Well, so a few things have changed this summer. One, I had another birthday, and two, I moved across the country. You know, not that big of a deal. I would love to tell you all about this in a much deeper and profound kind of way but I think that will have to wait for another day. Instead this will be a kind of show and tell. I tried to write in my journal the day after my birthday and this is what happened… For those who can't read indecipherable handwriting, that says "can't write date, sign of aging?"  When I told Future Husband about this, he laughed and said, “But that happens to you all the time.” Which is true, I have some kind of dyslexia that causes my brain to substitute inappropriate numbers and words into writing and conversation when I’m tired. I think that’s a thing. We will just say that it’s a thing, ok? Future Husband also laughed when I told him cheerily a day later, “Today I actually LIKE being older!” I...