Today

Late last year I came across an invitation to participate in Give Me A Word 2021. It is an annual free mini-retreat offered by Abbey of the Arts. In it, participants are invited into a time of contemplative discernment to choose a word that speaks to them, one they can spend the coming year engaging with and learning from. “This practice is connected to lectio divina, where we approach the sacred texts with the same request – “give me a word” we ask – something to nourish me, challenge me, a word I can wrestle with and grow into,” writes Christine Valters Paintner, Benedictine oblate and online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts. “The word which chooses us has the potential to transform us.”

I accepted the invitation and in time the word today is the one that patiently but persistently called out to me. It was the word that would not let me be.

I wasn’t surprised. For many months prior I had been attempting to focus more on what was in front of me that very day, not fixating so much on either the future or the past. I had begun to accept deep in my bones that today, and each day, is a new day. A day to begin again. A day to savor and explore. A day I would never get back.

Now, before you stop reading and say that you don’t have the luxury of having that kind of day – that you have deadlines and deliverables and deals to make – that life and duty call you to move at the speed of light, even though you don’t like it – consider this. Today is all any of us ever really have. In a world where truth is increasingly distorted and difficult to recognize, this is a timeless truth that we mortals know all too well, even if we find it hard or scary to embrace, or pretend that it is not true.

How do I know this to be true? I don’t have to look too far back to have it validated for me. I think about the almost 1,000,000 people around the world who have died from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. I think about the thousands of people living now with long Covid. I think about the people I knew who died suddenly and unexpectedly. I think about the way that relationships can unravel and forever change the world we knew. I think about the rise in natural disasters and the human toll each exacts, so often without any real warning. I think about our vulnerability to the fragile nature of world peace and how quickly lives can be upended by cracks in it.

“Things are always changing, so nothing can be yours.”, says Pema Chodron, an American Tibetan Buddhist teacher and philosopher.

The last two years have been testament to this truth, too.

So out of the surreal experiences of 2020 and 2021, I am learning to focus on today. One day at a time. Small step by small step.

My efforts to date have validated what I suspected to be true – that the ability to do this is not a flip of a switch that you just can turn on. It is a practice – something we have to experiment with and rehearse, doing it over and over again even if just for a moment. But fleeting moments of being able to appreciate what you have and where you are are big successes in this endeavor. They are cause for celebration and they propel us forward.

Here’s what my practice looks like for me, at least so far: I have a daily writing practice, a budding meditation practice, and I’ve become friends with my iPhone camera.

The writing helps to extract what is inside of me – ideas, thoughts, emotions. It can be as brief as 10 minutes or as long as an hour, depending on the time I have and what’s moving from head and heart to paper.

Meditation helps me to cultivate an awareness of what is going on around me, and, just as importantly, helps me to see and change how I respond to it. I’ve found Sharon Salzberg’s work to be the most accessible for me. The writing and meditation can inform one another, or they can stand on their own on any given day. Sharon’s work has been helpful in seeing and claiming for myself that each new moment is a moment to begin again – that meditation is a practice that anyone can do because it’s not about reaching some pinnacle to claim success. Rather, success is in coming to embrace the pattern of trying, falling short and trying again. Every moment of every day is a moment to begin again.

As to photography, I use my iPhone camera, something I always have on me. I have never taken a photography class so am quite the amateur. But these cameras can do amazing work if we use them. I mostly photograph trees and flowers and clouds and things outside. A lot of my cat. It helps to bring awareness. To focus attention. To examine simple beauty and complexity that we get to be a part of for the brief days that we spend on this earth. I don’t do it every day but it does motivate me to get out of my head for a bit, or out of the house, if I go for several days without exploring for something just waiting to be seen. I also incorporate pictures I take into my daily writing practice so they don’t just live on my phone.

Today we have the most hopeful signs yet that the pandemic may be entering a new phase. Like you, I hope that we are finally navigating our way out of the worst of it and into a new day and a new time. I say new because so much has changed since March 2020. We aren’t the same people we were before.

As we begin to make our collective way again, maybe you can use a word, too. Something to ground you, to focus you, to filter for you, to draw you out of yourself and back into the world.

I pass this invitation on to you.

“This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it,” says the Psalmist.

All that we have is in front of us today. This day. Do take good care not to miss it.

_______________________________

On Further Thought

Frederick Buechner on today. As always, so succinct and spot on.