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In a cozy room on the sixth floor of a Capital Hill hotel in Seattle, I’m seated at the window watching snow and traffic and bundled pedestrians.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be speaking at the Search For Meaning conference at Seattle University. But now I’m focused on what’s outside my window. I’m letting my mind play with trivial questions that pop up. Too often I hush this annoying-little-kid part of my mind, or run roughshod over it, believing I don’t have time to play. Today I have time – no computer, no smart phone, no schedule. My presentation is prepared and rehearsed. I have the leisure to be diverted and to play with my kid-self and her questions.

 

street people photo

A block away there is a building under construction. So far it is eleven stories high, not counting the giant crane on top. On the ninth floor a man is working in one of the windowless openings in the wall. He is affixing wide strips of orange material around the opening’s edges. What is that material? How does it stick? What’s it for? Is it a sealant of some sort, for when the windows are put in later? And, more importantly, how is that man suspended there, nine stories above the street? After several minutes of studying this question with my kid-self (how IS he defying gravity?), I realize he’s standing on a tiny platform that juts out of the window space from the inside. Isn’t he afraid? I don’t know. I would be!

 

On the south side of the building two large bright-orange boxes made of metal grating slide up and down a narrow erector-set trunk. These are exterior elevators, each with their own operators, taking workers and supplies to and from whichever floor they’re working. I can see the safety gates slide – one half up and one half down – opening each orange box to disgorge or admit their cargo. How many people can fit into each car? Are all the workers men, or are there some female welders and ironworkers? How cold is it up there? Why do the elevator doors move vertically instead of opening horizontally? Do the operators get bored? Do they ever give in to the temptation to race each other to the top?

 

I love watching people work. In this playful mood it feels like spying. I love knowing they don’t know I see them, don’t know I’m watching and wondering what they’re doing, and why, and how each movement contributes to their task. There is a crane operator in a glassed-in cab at the apex of the crane’s 60-foot upright support – what’s the name of that part? – and the how-many-feet-long? working arm of the crane. For as long as I’ve been watching the crane its operator has apparently been sitting there, idle, waiting for the next task to do. Does he read a book in his cab? Does he do sudoku puzzles? Text his girlfriend? Then suddenly there is a little crane excitement: the horizontal arm spins fairly quickly around the supporting tower, then comes to rest exactly where it was before. What was that about? My favorite guess on this playful day is that the operator got bored and took his gigantic crane for a whirl. Or maybe he wanted to see the other 180 degree view of the city for a minute.

 

I make myself a cup of coffee, and then return to the window. On the street below, construction workers, now finished for the day, jaywalk across four lanes of traffic, their florescent yellow or safety orange vests and jackets and hard hats and coolers stopping cars that were on their way to somewhere. I hope now to see the crane operator make the perilous climb down from his perch – I’ve stared and stared, waiting.

 

But my attention is diverted by a woman in gray baggy pants and shapeless coat, her ankles bare above run-down moccasins in this freezing weather. Isn’t she cold? Why is she limping? Where is she going? What’s in those heavy bags? Does she have any friends? Is she sad? Briefly the slow-moving gray bag lady is surrounded by bright OSHA-approved colors, swallowed up in a surf of building-makers; then she is alone again like a cold gray stone deposited on the concrete by the headed-home tide.

 

I must have missed the craneman’s descent, because all is quiet now at the building-under-construction. That’s okay. What I really needed to watch was that woman, and her work of limping up the steep street. She needed my attention just now; she needed my prayer that she find warmth for her restless sleep tonight.

 

Tomorrow morning I’ll encourage an audience to notice – and maybe to bless – the many, many people deposited on the concrete of our society who are doing their work of surviving on the margins.

 

 

[Please see a brief self-promotional save-the-date announcement at the end of this post]

 

[dropcapMedium]I[/dropcapMedium]n last month’s post I addressed a question that arose in a cancer support circle: How is it possible to sustain the feeling of every moment being precious when one is not “actively” dying?

Pondering the last part of the question last month, the part about about “actively” dying, sparked many great reply comments; and the conversation is continuing among thoughtful circles of folks, which pleases me immensely! Those comments and conversations will be added to this month’s comments, all to become fodder for the third of three posts derived from that original, juicy question.

For now, back to the first part of that question: How DO we “sustain the feeling of every moment being precious”? How do we make every moment precious? Regardless of our state of health. Regardless of our life expectancy.

 

These are three of my ways:
nurturing the earworm of gratitude,
following curiosity, and
practicing presence.

 

Gratitude
An “earworm,” is one of those annoying songs that shows up in your head and just won’t leave until you deliberately replace it with another song that you like better (for now). I think of gratitude as a single sacred earworm — or “word worm,” perhaps — that reiterates a hundred times a day: “Thank you.” Sometimes it says a delighted “Oh, thank you” or a prayerful “Dear Holy One, thank You” or a joyful “How can I possibly say ‘thank you’ enough for all of this?’” Maybe a “thank you” comes when you realize that that place in your shoulder hasn’t ached for the last two hours. Or that the toilet, yet again, reliably flushes. Thank you!

So many moments for gratitude: the small birds excitedly flocking in to a freshly-filled feeder; the fragrance of oregano in a simmering pasta sauce, or of lilac in a hidden-away garden; the close call at an intersection that didn’t become an accident; the colors and abundance at a farmers’ market. All precious moments. Let your earworm sing its gratitude! Every day. All day long.

 

Curiosity
Remember, back in the dark ages, when we had to look up stuff in the Encyclopedia Britannica, hoping that the current annual, filled with last year’s developments, would give us the almost-up-to-date info we needed? Then in 1994 the EB went digital and online, and in 2012 it ceased hardcopy publication altogether. Now we have Wikipedia, updated minute-by-minute; and Google, so ubiquitous that the brand name has become a lower-case verb.

These days, any time I find myself thinking, “I wonder [what, who, where] . . .,” I revel in the fact that it takes only a few keystrokes until the answer is right there on my computer screen. And from time to time I dive into one of those digital rabbit holes that a simple search often presents. I try not to spend too long there, but once in a while curiosity says that I’ve gotta follow that white rabbit who is perpetually “late.” I am not yet late (in the deceased sense), so I go ahead and follow my curiosity and often end up with a dozen more reasons to say “Wow, thank you!”

Even better than googling is the feeding of curiosity with first-hand experience, taking time to magnify the five senses and enjoy them. Follow the trail of a snail, or the flight of a heron to its nest. Watch your skin heal from a blister – notice the dying of cells, and their replacement. Be fascinated by the way that morning sun makes ground fog seem to be a living thing. Listen for the harmony of sounds as water flows over stones in a creek bed – hear that deep bass note? It’s always been there, but you had not noticed before; now you can smile “thank you” for the secret that the creek has revealed to you.

Be curious about people, too. Ask them unexpected questions about themselves: “What are you passionate about?” “Tell me about your favorite place in the world.” Then take the time to really listen to their answers as if this were the most important thing in your whole day. It possibly is!

 

Presence
My third way of sustaining the preciousness of every moment is really a part of the previous two, but it’s sort of gratitude and curiosity on steroids. Presence is being as fully open as possible to every detail of every moment, bringing your curiosity, your attention, and your gratitude to each moment with as little judgment or fear as possible.

I believe that’s the whole point of incarnation, after all — to surround the invisible spark of divinity, the soul, with the amazing complexity of mortal flesh for the length of a lifetime. The soul wants to experience every detail of a life, to be fully present within it, however long that life may be.

It helps to take advantage of some wonderful guides who understand and embody presence. Read Mary Oliver’s poetry, or the new anthology titled Poetry of Presence, or the brief meditative essays in Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, or the glorious Love Poems from God, sacred poetry of twelve mystics, translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

 

Do I hear someone saying that all this practicing of gratitude and curiosity and presence takes time? Yes, indeed it does. And isn’t that the essence of life: time? Precious time, that begins ticking at conception, and, at some unpredictable point, stops. Yet, as a very wise friend of mine once told me, we have all the time we need in the time we have. We have been given the gift of time, in a body equipped with miraculous senses, directed by a mind that is curious, and enriched by a soul that is grateful for the chance to be embodied and fully present.

So, however much more of it we may have, it is enough.

Here’s to life: L’chaim! champagne photo

 

 

 

[A brief self-promotional save-the-date announcement: I have been invited to be a presenter at the 2018 Search For Meaning Book Festival at Seattle University on February 24. There will be many presenters, hundreds of books, and an expected 1000 registrants from around the country. It’s a fabulous day of community comprising a melange of spiritual perspectives, all on a lovely welcoming campus; I’d be going even if I weren’t among the presenters! Check out the information at searchformeaning@seattleu.edu   Tickets go on sale in mid-January.]