PRACTICE: If possible, find a place to look at the sky for a minute or so before continuing.
It was a perfect summer morning with the promise of a perfect summer day, the kind of morning one could take for granted if one wasn’t intentional about savoring it. The humidity was low, the temperature just right. I had walked, watered the thirsty plants and uncharacteristically decided to stretch on the deck.
Lying on my back, the magnificence of the morning arrested my attention. As far as I could see, the sky was cloudless. After stretching, I laid on the floor, soaking in the “nothingness” of the soft pastel blue sky. Slowly, the “nothingness” began to yield some “things” to me. Birds were flying over and around me, some so close that I felt the air beneath their wings. They appeared in my field of vision. I did not turn my head to follow their path. A feather presumably from one of the birds, floated by, soaring on the breeze of the morning. I didn’t follow its path either. As I continued to be a spectator, I spied a slice of the moon and wondered how far away from earth it could be. Shortly thereafter, a jet flew close to the moon, and I wondered about its distance from earth. I quickly told myself that it was not as far away as the moon. Simply put, I allowed myself to be lost in the blue sky. I found a fragment of perfect peace as a spectator of the vastness and treasures of a minuscule piece of the sky.
When I came back to the deck, nothing about it or my circumstances had changed. But I was different. I felt renewed, revitalized for the day ahead. Patience in the serendipitous moment had rendered a huge reward.
I spend a sizeable amount of time unsuccessfully trying to create the moments that I experienced. I think my mistake is in the “I” spend… to create. I don’t have the knowledge or power to create the beauty of the morning. I do have the power to daily take a minute or two – no matter how rushed – to look at the sky, blue or overcast, and expect to be rebooted, rejuvenated and resurrected by something that is revealed for the day ahead.
As I pen these words, I am looking at stems of mustard drying on a nearby table. If a single mustard seed can produce multiple stalks with multiple pods filled with multiple seeds, what might a daily seed of a minute or two of mindfulness produce in a life? TRY IT!
Mark 4 :32
PONDER THIS THOUGHT--- Patience never disappoints.
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