PRESENCE

Yesterday, after beginning to read John O'Donohue's conversations with John Quinn, I woke up in the middle of the night, with these thoughts forming. I think many of us are not present to our own lives; it's as if we see the outline of ourselves but can't quite occupy them. We're either living smaller than we're made to be, or outside the frame of who we really are. I'm not one to believe that there is a guiding hand that decided for us in advance what kind of person we would turn out, but something emerges in formative years, aspirations mingling with wounds to produce a sense of calling. Later this solidifies into the answer to the questions about what brings both healing to the world and joy to the person doing the healing. How to fill the space that has been given you, no less and no more.

Try to become a presence in your own life.

Try to be present with all that is in your life.

This is the meaning of spiritual discipline, of having dominion over yourself.

That you can take the pauses you need to take.

Let there be spaces, even between breaths.

The echoes of the wonder you used to feel call you, not because you have lost them, but because they are still alive in you. You are not alone on this path. It is not a path back to Eden, to some magical childhood innocence. It is, rather, a path forward, toward the wholeness that has always been with you, and just hasn't fully formed itself yet.

It takes breathing, and intention to bring it to fullness.

You are invited to make spaces between things, to nurture sacraments of interruption, to make spaces between things.

And to find the hidden place where the whole you has always stood.