On the art of being present

God has been teaching me a lot about being in the moment lately. I am one who loves to think ahead and envision big thoughts, and I like to think that I reflect on my past to glean in the fields of wisdom and knowledge that the past bring. Both of these add value and depth to our lives not just as Christians, but as humans. However, so often I loose what is in the moment for that which I am thinking about my future.

Jacob and I watched After Earth last night. While the movie was mediocre, there is a message that resonates throughout the movie. The message is "be in the moment". In the movie (small plot line spoiler), aliens attack humans. They are attracted only to one thing, the pheromone they secrete when they are in fear. Without it, the monsters cannot see their prey (you). The way to avoid being seen is to calm your fear. The way you calm your fear is to work on being in the present moment. To be in the flow around you, to rest in the moment and be fully and completely engaged in that moment only. I think this is a valuable lesson for us today.

“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today." Matt 6:34 (NRSV)

Fear, fear of the past, fear of the future; clouds our ability to be in the flow of The Holy Spirit in our day to day lives. We get bound up with what if and how come and could it be. Instead we need to cultivate the moment we are inhabiting and be present for everyone we meet, and be listening and discerning for the voice of God in our day to day. God is everywhere, and He is always speaking, it is only up to us to listen.

Two different times over the last month my family and I have gone to the local YMCA to go swimming. We love our time in the water together. It ends up just being a little swimming and a lot of play. Exercise and play together? Count me in. But these two times we entered the water there has been a young man named Gabriel playing basketball in the water by himself. He is in the 5th grade, and he believes that he can do the N.B.A. a service by growing up and playing for them. The problem is, he is always alone.

Both times he has been there, God has given me a little nudge to just spend a few minutes with him. All I do it throw the ball at the net, and let him block it. He always exclaims "Not in my house" as he relishes his victory by blocking my shot. He genuinely enjoys it. It is apparent to me that Gabriel does not have much, if any, fatherly affection in his life. All I have to do is spend a few minutes with him and tell him how cool he is for blocking my shots. Words of affirmation spoken in the moment can yield eternal rewards.

I do not know Gabriel's story, I may see him again, I may not. But I do know that if I was burdening my mind with forethought and fear of tomorrow, I would have missed the opportunity to speak into the life of an affirmation hungry young man.

"This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24) NRSV

My challenge is to live in the moment, the flow as it were, and rejoice. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, the past is prone to poor memory and all we have is the now. God who was faithful in the past is faithful now, and odds are he will be in the future as well. Rest and rejoice...

Life in Three Parts

"I am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come,

the Almighty (Rev 1:8 Emph mine)

God is fundamentally triune in nature. We hear about it all the time. The mystery of the Trinity, God of past present and future and so on and so forth. Many revolutions have been started and much blood spilled over properly defining what the Trinity is. In Church History we look at some of the most internecine debates and differences and how they caused death and destruction. History at it's finest. 

I recently started reading through a book called Knowing God's Triune Story and I was impressed with the idea of God in three movements. In this case, The God who was, the God who is, and the God who is to come. He likens the idea to ourselves and our past, our present, and our future. 

The first movement is the movement of the right now. Me, in this place, writing this blog. You, reading this blog, drinking your coffee. In the now we are present and engaged and living this fleeting moment with the help of The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us to integrate the past into our moment with optimism for the future, but without flying off the rails. We are gaining experience, but we are "in the flow' of God's call on our time. 

The second movement is the movement of story, or the movement of our past. This is our recorded history, our oral history, our re-telling (or not retelling) of the past. This is God. God is the faithful God of our past, and he is working in the present through the working of his Spirit. He is defining who we are at every moment because we are both wrestling with, and yielding to, our past. This past profoundly affects the way we see the present, and shapes the way we look into the future. Sometimes I think of all the life on this planet we should be pitied the most. We are given the gift of learning from our past, integrating it into our moment, but then using it to project our actual, or hoped for future. Unlike animals who are not given much gift in the way of forethought, we are. We do not operate on instinct near as much as animals and it is a blessing, except for when it is a curse. 

The final movement is abstraction, or the ability to look ahead. This is where Jesus is. We look ahead to the return of Jesus, we look ahead to what is changing in our lives, we look ahead because where Jesus is, there is hope. We are a people of hope and optimism. You can say we are not by looking at the fringes of society and deciding that we are a doomed species. If this is the case, then why do we get together at the end of each year and cast a vision for a better and brighter future for ourselves? Why, when polled, does the population generally feel that the future is indeed going to be better? Jesus fulfills our longing for relationship and wholeness into the future. 

We write a lot of theology and philosophy based on a static God who is revealed in the pages of the Bible. This is not bad, to a point. However, when we reach the ultimate conclusion that God of the past is just that, the past, and that we are all doomed to a sin filled future, we loose the battle for hearts and minds. We loose the battle for love. Fundamentally the fabric of the cosmos is love. Love that is eternal, optimistic, grounded in mystery and fulfilled in our time and space. 

My goal, as hard as it is for myself, is to live more in the now and the wow. When I can let go of old wine skins and embrace the new wine that is pouring eternally over my heart and soul from a creator who is so in love with me and who has no grudge with me what-so-ever, I am free. Indeed I have had only a few transcendent moments in my life where I can truly say I touched that eternal fountain unafraid. But, when I do, the refreshing out pouring of the Holy Spirit is clean and leaves my mind so aloft in the cosmos that it takes days to come down. It is a great feeling. 

It is a challenge not to cast of the old and declare it of no value. There is value, absolute unequivocal value in learning from the past. However, memory is finite, ulterior motives always are at play, and until we can truly grasp the interplay of the spirit in the now with the history of our past, we will fall short. We will never fully come to rest in the fountains of now, and into the future. The interplay is complex, but it is so worth working towards. 

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Phyllis Tickle give her last public address. She is retiring from public life and I was honored to be there. She spent 20 minutes telling us one very important thing. The Spirit is on the move, and He is looking for fresh expressions and a place to grow. I truly believe He is moving to unify churches, beliefs, and people into one organism, one new and exiting organism. This organism will be...the church!