Savor

I delight in today's collection of moments.  This one spent with the dog, snuffling his warm beagle smell until I'm full with the scent of him.  That next moment spent in absorbing a book I've been meaning to read. Another appreciating our house full of boys - knee-deep in testosterone and already anticipating their departure to their own lives. There's enough time later for work - so this moment, this one right here - I'm spending on the porch, pen and notebook in hand, sun on my face, still and at rest from my life's almost constant motion.

I can hear a cardinal calling and the rain of acorns cascading into the road from the tree across the street.  One of our neighbors runs a saw and just down the road, a mower starts its back and forth path across a lawn scattered with yellow, orange, and red autumn.  It's in these ordinary moments of work, rest, thought, and sun soaking that I want to live.  These nothing special barefooted and full-hearted moments of Sunday or tomorrow's Monday are where I will find my hope and happiness.

My life's next moment is still a minute away.  I only have this one here and now -  guaranteed.

Some moments test our patience, our strength, our willpower, and faith.  It's in these moments we spend our time anxious, worried, uncertain, and filled with doubt.  These are dark minutes, tossing and turning our nights and twisting our sheets.  We wish we could hurry past these moments to break through into the light of tomorrow's dawn and the return of another chance to get it right.

Some of our moments are spent with hands reaching out in friendship or service to others.  We use one or two of our of our moments for a kind word.  A phrase of encouragement.  A compliment.  A noticing of someone else's proximity to and importance in our living. It's a choice to - however briefly - walk in the shoes of another.

Other moments we gather for our very own - knowing full well we cannot hold them forever - but still, we can try.  Can't we?

Our life's moments can be heart-stopping or heart-sustaining, but either way, these are the moments that make up a life.  These grains of sand through the hour glass, beads on a string, and knots on our counting rope are the summary and accumulation of all the people we've been in one or another of our moments of time.

I want to savor and taste each and every moment of mine.  Moments filled with a range of emotion, dreams, rays of sun's compassion, clouds of confusion, and the breath of a fresh air breeze.  Each come and go with an inhale and exhale of the day's rhythm. Regular as the tide and certain as the sun's rise and set.  It's more than being present or being intentional - it's being.  Pure and simple. Here. Now. And now again.

I must train myself to roll each one of my moments like M&Ms around on my tongue so I experience the full flavor and sweetness of each. It is here we live our lives ... in the moment before each leaf falls, it's moment of downward drifting, and the one just after the leaf lands.