Today I had a vision to share with a friend.  She was wedged in a crevice on a steep mountain.  The path which led around the mountain had fallen away at this one point; there was a gap between the mountain wall and a huge boulder along the path.  She was set in that crevice – but not just so that people could walk all over her, which was my first thought. Rather, she was positioned to be a bridge so they could continue on the path without danger.  Sometimes we fill that purpose.  That’s God’s love to us and to others.

Now as to my path.  The Lord pulled up a large boulder with a smooth flat top for me to have a seat.  “Come,” he said to me.  “You’re always in a hurry.  Always running forward, thinking about tomorrow, thinking about the next moment, the next task.  You’re missing out.”

“Now that you mention it, I see that.  I read about the importance of now, of being in the moment.  Can’t say that I do that very well.”

“I can’t say that you do it at all,” he responds with a gleam in his eye.  “You’re missing out on too much.  You’re missing appreciation for all the beauty that surrounds you, all of creation. You’re missing the love of the people that surround you. You don’t sit still long enough to let that love in, to let it touch you and transform you.  You read about all that kind of stuff . . . but to you it is yet just stuff.  I want you to draw the life from it. Meditate in it. Learn of it.”

I sit in silence.  What can I say? It’s true.  Busy, busy, busy, and so happy to get more busy.  Sure I take walks in nature and appreciate it . . . to some extent.  But I’m generally more aware of the time I’m putting in, of how much further, faster, and higher I can walk.  Not getting the benefit of nature itself.

“It’s what occupies your mind that connects or disconnects you from the now,” the Lord explains to me.  What is to come later will be there later. Just consider now what you are in now. And that includes the people.”

“This past month I have become more aware of people with whom I connect.  I have felt their love, Lord,” I say not in defense, but as an opening line as I within myself already know what is to follow.  “But I sense I still have not absorbed that love, that life-giving force from you that comes through people.  I am touched and pleasantly surprised with it. But after just a moment I move on to what’s next.  What’s next?  Is that a syndrome, Lord?”

“Yes, a syndrome to avoid.  Just be about the now. Soak it in. Take it in through all your senses – those senses I set within you. Take your time; there’s no hurry.  It is far better that you are fully present in where you are now than that you make plans for tomorrow, plans that you may never fully implement. Today is for today.”

“I feel a kind of peace about that already, Lord.  I will to learn of you in this, and to live now.”

The impulse is to get up and go now because we’ve finished the conversation.  Yet I know to not follow that trap. “Not so fast,” I say to myself with God smiling at my side.  As we sit in silence, I see others passing in front of me on the simple path. I feel quite exposed. Vulnerable. Why isn’t she going anywhere? they must be thinking. But I will not be distracted, or moved on before time.  I sit. I close my eyes, and I feel the love – from my God and from so many brothers and sisters he has sent to me to express that love.  “Thank you, Lord.”