Hold onto Six Minutes
Or even 15 seconds
A lot can change in just six minutes...From seeing these colors start to appear about 2 minutes before this photo at 7:35am...
...to this photo at 7:37am...
...to this one at 7:39am...
Yes, I had moved by that last photo. However, those clouds before the bench were brightly illuminated in pink just a few minutes before. A lot can change in just six minutes.
A few years ago I read something from Richard Rohr about how we tend to dwell on the negative for far longer than we do on the positive. I know how easy it is for me to dwell on that cranky email I receive or the feeling that my sermon wasn’t what I hoped it would have been or when I read something that annoys me. And I also know how easily I let compliments, affirmations, blessings, and good news just go quickly through my heart and my head. Rohr shared about how we need to intentionally dwell on the good, the beautiful, the holy, the sacred, the blessings - even for just 15 seconds rather than letting them slip by. We need to dwell on them to allow them to imprint into our memories and our spirits just as much (and probably more than) we allow the opposite to imprint.
This morning, I experienced six minutes of a majestic color show in the sky. It was magnificent and soul filling. I have seen other sunrises and sunsets where the colors lasted far longer but this one today was just six minutes. But I tried to put into practice what Rohr shared - hold to those six minutes and allow them to imprint upon my spirit and my memories.
It wasn’t until later in the morning when I read the latest post from Carrie Newcomer’s Gathering of Spirits site where she read and reflected upon a poem called Praise What Comes by Jeanne Lohmann. (Here’s Carrie’s reflection ) and here is the poem (link below has the poem as well as audio of Jeanne Lohmann reading it.
Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,
finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another
ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?1
Do you hear the overlap between my experience this morning, Rohr’s words, and Ms. Lohmann’s beautiful words? What most spoke to me was the final line...”did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?” But through the whole as it moved from everyday things of “immoderate good health” and reading and walks to touchstones of grief and mistakes, it spoke to me of holding to those all-too-brief-and-infrequent-and-passing moments that are in between all the other stuff of life.
I feel like I read that same sense in the Psalms over and over. Even in the most painful of Psalms to read, there are the nuggets of “Yet will I praise” or recounting the moments when God’s showing up was experienced. It didn’t diminish the rest but instead held them all together.
So, when those moments come - and they will - Hold them. Dwell on them. Write them down. Share them. Celebrate them. They may be a 10 word text message or a lengthy email. They might be a beautifully handwritten card. They might be a random thing you notice. They might be 6 minutes in the sky on an early morning walk. They could even be a last-second game winning goal for your hockey team (which happened for the Avalanche a few nights ago). Screenshot the text message. Save the email. Put that card on your desk and return to it a few days later. Look back on the photo or remember the feel of those 6 minutes.
One of the best apps I use on a daily basis on my phone is a journaling app called Day One. The best feature for me is the one that has taken 10+ years of using the app to really receive the fullest blessing of it. Each day, when I write in this app, I can tap “On This Day” and see what I have written on that day in years past. It is such a gift to be able to revisit moments that happened years ago that have passed from the forefront of my memory. It is beautiful to see moments that were difficult that took place and to see how much things may have changed. It allows me to return to dwell on all of these things. Check it out... it is a pretty amazing and beautiful app (but you have to stick with it for at least a year to start seeing all of that).
But again...hold...dwell...write...share...celebrate. Hold those moments when it is hard to hold, to dwell, to write, to share, to celebrate.
GPLJ,
Ed
For those who have been following the bench, I wanted to share the images from the year so far of the other bench. My two benches are a 2-minute walk from each other (as you can see from the above photos) and I wasn’t sure which I was going to resonate more with. So I have been photographing both each time I’ve been at Winton. So here’s the other bench from the year so far.
Beautiful, Ed! I want to check out the Day One app!