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The Bible begins with a divine hide and seek. In Genesis 3, God is missing. God is not with the newly created couple in the Garden of Eden, but instead of looking for God, they talk about God. Genesis 3: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LordGod had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; ³ but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” God is not there. Is God nearby? The story doesn’t say. What is clear is that the couple doesn’t seek God, doesn’t look for God, they do however theologize. Instead of talking to God (prayer) they talk about God (theology). Talking about God leads them to seek to be without God, to have divine power, alone. The result is disaster. Fear overtakes faith. Hiding replaces finding. Having eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve  go an hide from God. God takes the role of seeker. ⁸ They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Get Found”

What if you cut your stuff in half? Hannah Salwen did, by choice. Before I share her story, consider the king in this next story adapted from Heather Forrest’s collection Wisdom Tales…

Once there was a prince who was so sad, his eyes seemed full of sadness and tears. The king was concerned about his son. He got cooks to prepare the best dishes, toymakers to make the best toys, and teachers to share their most stimulating ideas, but to no avail. No gift or treasure could free the prince from his sadness.
The king called his advisors who offered this solution, “For the prince to be happy, you must dress him in the shirt of a truly happy man. Then he will be cured of all his sorrow.”
So the king set out on a journey to find a truly happy man.
He went through the village to the church. The priest always seemed to him to be a happy man. “Your, majesty,” the priest said, “to what do I owe this honor?”
The king said, “You are known as a good and holy man. I would like to know, would you accept the position of bishop should it come to you?”
“Certainly,” replied the priest.
“Never mind,” the king said and left disappointed. If the priest were truly happy, he wouldn’t want to be bishop.
The king went to another kingdom and visited another monarch. “My friend,” asked the king, “are you happy?”
“Most of the time, but not always, there are many nights I am restless because I am worry about losing all that I have worked so hard to gain.”
The king left for he knew that this man’s shirt would not do.
On his way back to his own kingdom, he happened to be riding by a farm. He heard singing. He stopped his carriage and followed the sound of the song. There he found a poor farmer, singing at the top of his lungs. The farmer looked up to see the king approaching and said, “Good day, sir!”
“Good day to you,” said the king. “You seem so happy today.”
“I am happy every day for I am blessed with a wonderful life.”
The king said, “Come with me to the castle. You will be surrounded with luxury and never want for anything again.”
“Thank you your majesty, but I would not give up my life for all the castles in the world.”
The king could not contain his joy. “My son is saved! All I need do is take this man’s shirt back to the castle with me!”
It was then the king looked and realized… the man wasn’t wearing a shirt.[2]

Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Cut Your Stuff in Half.”

Here or there does not matter.
We must be still and still moving.
T.S. Eliot

There are times when your thoughts and emotions can possess you, and you do need to respond. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” When anxiety takes over, or when any thoughts or emotions dominate, telling them to “Be still,” is a helpful practice. This isn’t an act of emotional condemnation telling them, “You’re a bad emotion,” or telling yourself, “You shouldn’t feel that way,” but just instructing the turbulence in your mind to, “Be still.” It is recognizing that your peace must begin within as Robert Allen described,

We can only help make our lives and our world more peaceful, when we ourselves feel peace. Peace already exists within each of us, if we only allow ourselves to feel its comfort. Peace of mind begins when we stop thinking about how far we have to go, or how hard the road has been, and just let ourselves feel peace. Peace of mind gives us the strength to keep trying and keep walking along the path that we know is right for our lives.

A great example of “Be still” in practice is Jesus with the disciples in a storm. The story is found in Matthew 8, Mark 4, and Luke 8. This is Mark’s version,

³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, (Jesus) said to (the disciples), “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶ And leaving the crowd behind, they took (Jesus) with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.
³⁷ A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸ But (Jesus) was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
³⁹ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
⁴⁰ He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
⁴¹ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Say, “Be still!” to Your Stormy Thinking.”

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. Basho

Once, when a religious professional wanted to follow Jesus, he asked a simple question but found great disappointment in Jesus’ response in Matthew 8,

¹⁸ Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. ¹⁹ A scribe then approached and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” ²⁰ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

I feel sympathy for the poor scribe, a dedicated religious professional who was trying to become one of Jesus’ disciples; he simply wanted to know where the rabbi was going. His dedication was to go anywhere with Jesus wherever that was. He could not imagine a rabbi without a location, a space, or an address.

Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Be at Home Everywhere and Everywhen”

Yesterday is but today’s memory
and tomorrow is today’s dream.
Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday is not real. It is only our memories. Tomorrow is not real. It is simply our imagination of what might be. All that is real is now. Anxiety is trying to prelive the future, which is impossible. Regret is trying to change the past, which is also impossible.

To live the present, we must let go of the past, which includes letting go of our past no matter how we used to live. If we try to relive it, we will only ruin the present. Nothing ruins the present like bringing the past to the current moment.

Sometimes, letting go of our past is so challenging, we need help. We need others to share their testimonials with such honesty that we might find enough courage to live our present.

Danny Flowers has been my role model as he honestly has shared his past to help others let go of regret, move past anxiety, and live the present. His song is, I Was a Burden.

In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind,…The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain. David Richo

Moments require the art of breathing. To receive the next moment in life, we have to let go of
the previous ones. The lesson of the lungs is to master letting go in our lives in order to receive.

Imagine you are going to swim under water. You take a deep breath and dive downward. After feeling the weightlessness of swimming, your lungs start to ache. Your body needs air. Your muscles may even cramp a little. You stay under as long as you can, forcing your body to do your will. As you head to the surface, you realize you dove deeper than you thought so you reach and pull for the top swimming as fast as you can kicking your legs furiously.

Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Let it Go – Release to Receive”

The most revealing lesson for me in developing our moment practices came when I began to focus on my breathing. I had a lot to learn from this simple process. Breathing shows us how to experience our moments instead of just marking time. While breathing has been something I’ve done all my life, it wasn’t until trying to be present and be still that I attended to my breathing and learned this valuable lesson of the lungs.

Breathing has two simple steps: inhaling and exhaling, receiving and letting go. So basic, so natural, but you can still mess it up. Let me show you. Try this.

Inhale.
Without exhaling, suck in a little more air.
Now, still without exhaling, suck in some more.
Hold it.
Feel like your suffocating?
Notice, you have more air than you can possibly use, yet, you feel like your body is starting to ache from lack of oxygen. Hold the air inside until these words start to look blurry. If you pass out, fall down. When you regain consciousness, from this point forward, don’t do everything someone tells you to do, but do pay attention to your breathing.

Breathing is simple, inhale and exhale, receive and release. Life is also simple. It has the same process as breathing, receiving and letting go. As long as we relax, and unless there is an illness or injury to the lungs, breathing will take care of itself, taking in the exact amount the body needs, distributing it through the blood stream, and then releasing so that it can inhale again. Simple.

The part of the process the body does naturally that we seem to find difficult in other areas of life is the exhaling, the releasing, the letting go. We don’t like to let go. If we don’t release, we can’t receive. The body knows just how crucial letting go is, yet, we seldom notice.

OBSERVE! There are few things as important, as religious, as that. Frederick Buechner

In the Bible, there are some significant moments when feet play an important part. At the burning bush, Moses is told to, “Take off your shoes because you are standing on holy ground.” In the gospel of John, on the night of The Last Supper, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. As Moses approaches the presence of God at the burning bush, he must have been aware of his feet, the ground underneath, the heat of the shrub ablaze. As the disciples shared the Passover meal, they must have been conscious of the tingling of their freshly washed feet.

To journey toward stillness, be where you are. Occupy the space you’re in. Feel your body from your feet on upward. In the Zen tradition, part of meditation is to give attention to your body, what you’re feeling, often starting with your toes and moving to the top of your head, noticing where there is tension and giving it permission to relax. Notice also your holy ground, what’s beneath your feet, behind your back, and pay attention to the sounds, vibrations, even smells around you.

To pray this practice, I use the words of Clara Scott’s hymn, Open My Eyes,

Open my eyes that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.
Silently now I wait for Thee
Ready, my God, Thy will to see.
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine.

Nude Karaoke was the first sign I saw as I walked up Printers’ Alley in Nashville on my way to a bar where Etta and Bob were playing. I was a little stunned by the sign having never imagined such a thing, until then.
“Don’t you want to come in?” said a slouched over man on a stool. He was wearing a once white t-shirt that also once fit. “This is a good place for a guy like you,” he said. I smiled wondering, ‘what did he mean, like me?’ He added his next sales pitch pointing to the door in case I was wondering how to go in, “We got nudes.” My uncontrollable imagination then gave me a brief image of a bar full of men identical to the man on the stool, naked and singing.

Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Notice Your Nude Karaokes”

In high school, perhaps my greatest deception was when attendance was called. The teacher would say my name, “David Jones,” and I would reply, “Here,” or “Present,” and I would be marked as attending. The lie was that though my body was in my desk, my heart, mind, and soul were often elsewhere. Showing up and being marked as present is far different from being present and attending each moment.

One of the greatest temptations in missing a moment is to try to capture it. One of the great ongoing battles at weddings is between pastors and photographers. People want to capture the moment in pictures and miss it. I recently did an outdoor wedding. The photographer was someone I had not worked with before. I made the mistake of assuming I didn’t need to tell her not to be a be a distraction during the wedding service. For her, the present was insignificant compared to capturing the moment for prosperity. She danced around, up the aisle, back down, in front of both families, even behind me. It took all my energy to focus on my purpose of guiding the couple through their vows while the photographer was behind me, low to the ground, clicking away. I almost hit her with my Bible. Had I not needed it later, I would have.
Our challenge in special moments like a wedding ceremony, a graduation, or a child’s birth is to try and capture the moment for prosperity instead of living each moment as Epictetus encouraged,

Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.

Live NOW. What are your other choices? You can’t relive your past. Trying to relive your past only leads to regret. You can’t prelive your future. Trying to prelive your future only fosters anxiety.  Instead, live now. It’s all you have. In this short video, Alan Watts advises you on how to live NOW.

According to Alan Watts, “The great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer.”
Each is a conqueror of space. Since we cannot go too much farther in outer space in our era, and there is little land left to explore below the stars and above the oceans, we turn back to time. We try to conquer time by transforming time into another space which we refer to as the calendar and the ‘to-do list and fill every minute with as much ‘stuff’ every day making our schedules as tightly packed as our closets and our attics. To encounter God, we are called out to a place beyond our understandings of both time and space. Here is my version of an ancient story I heard from Alan Watts,

Once there was a fisherman. He cast his net into the water. After fishing for a while, he held up his net and looked through the squares and into the horizon. Off in the distance, he saw the mountain. He had been there when he was younger but found the mountain too difficult to climb. Now that he was older, there was something comforting about looking through his net at the mountain in the distance. What he could not climb, he reduced to what he could count and measure The mountain was six spaces across and four high.
He took his net with him. Through the spaces, he measured and compared his hut to other huts. That night he had a disagreement with his son, he held up the net to see how many squares tall his son was.
Others adopted his way of measuring and made similar grids putting space on parchment and then paper. Even time was transformed to space as days were given formal boundaries on calendars. Moments gave way to minutes and lives transformed to lists.
In the midst of this objectifying of time and space walked a rabbi. He approached the shore and some fishermen casting their nets into the sea. “Follow me,” he called. They did. He had one initial requirement. They had to leave their nets behind.

What are your nets? Spaces you use to gain control of your life unaware they can become barriers to the call of God.

In 2011, following the Nashville flood and downturn in the economy, in a time of uncertainty in my life, I prayed to God, “What do you want me to do?” God responded, “The question is not, ‘What do I want you to do?’ The question is, ‘Who do I want you to be?’” For me, a good sign that God is speaking to me and not just my own voice echoing in my head is when my questions are answered with another question. Apparently, The Socratic Method is not dead with God.
I thought for a minute. Carefully considering my response, then I asked, “Okay, who do you want me to be?”

Silence. No response. No answer. Three months. Six months. Longer, still waiting and left with the question, “Who am I to be?” For a year, I tried being good, competent, successful, effective. I tried being like Jesus, which in my mind, somehow meant being ‘nice’ to everyone even though few perceived Jesus as ‘nice’ in the gospels. I even tried being like Old Yellar, yes, the dog from the Disney movie, loyal, faithful, defending his family, sacrificing himself. I tried being anything and everything I could for about a year. I failed repeatedly at many different things. “Who am I to be?” went unanswered.

Continue reading “Live Your Moments: Be Here”