There Is Only One Thing Right Now

Tuesday, March 24

There is only one thing right now.

This one thing is life and Being. It sounds like two things, but it isn't. 

It's single and whole.

It begins here, in this moment, as I sit here quietly this morning before the day really begins. 

There is a silence in me that exists before these words arise. 

I am. 

I am here.

There's a subtle — well, perhaps not subtle at all, in fact, it is quite insistent — vibration in me that sounds the note, establishes the consonance, of my being here. It has no thoughts or opinions. 

It's alive. 

I am alive.

It's up to me to determine how I take this in and what it means to me. I sense it as relationship; relationship with a sacred quality that gives rise to everything. In most of creation, the material world, this relationship is passive; it exists, but its interactions are automatic. In me, and humanity, other living creatures, the relationship becomes active. This is especially true in human Beings, who are born with a sacred duty to heed this call. I'm called to take a new kind of responsibility towards it and towards life.

That responsibility does not consist of grand things. I'm not going to save the world. The responsibility begins here within my silence, and extends from the stillness at the center of my soul towards the world. It's formed of very fine tendrils of attention. Those tendrils of attention reach towards the objects, events, circumstances, and conditions of my life and receive them as they arise. 

I take these things in gently and hopefully with a sober, intelligent, and respectful towards the fact that I'm able to sense them at all. That's a gift; and I ought to respect it—not intellectually, as a theory of goodness, but as an actual experience of the goodness of life as it flows into me in every small and quite detailed particular.

Yesterday I had the occasion to eat a few things in which the true goodness of life suddenly blossomed within me. There are times when putting a bite of food into one's mouth is recognized as a sacred action. It's the small moments like that that stand out to me in life. One bite of food can be a more important experience of Being than the sum total of all the stress, anxiety, concern, or fear that I feel throughout the rest of the day. If I intentionally locate my spiritual center of gravity in the small things and attend to them with love and respect, everything else is different.

The experience of the Lord is in the small details. 

Today I wish to be there for them with all of the intelligence, sensation, and feeling that I can concentrate within this silence and this vibration of Being.

“Ich lerne sehen. Ich weiß nicht, woran es liegt, es geht alles tiefer in mich ein und bliebt nicht and der Stelle stehen, wo es sonst immer zu Ende war. Ich habe ein Inneres, von dem ich nicht wußte. Alles geht jetzt dahin. Ich weiß nicht, was dort geschieht.”

—Rilke, Die Aufzeichnung des Malte Laurids Brigge  

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.