Lilies of the Field

I must confess.  Having my two sweet granddaughters here for an overnight certainly goes a long way to “putting stuff” in perspective.  We painted pumpkins, picked wildflowers and fanciful leaves and moss from the forest, we played hide and seek, then we came back to the cottage and made a collage with our treasures.

The gourmet fare was baked cheese & macaroni for dinner and oatmeal with maple syrup for breakfast.

Being in the presence of a being who is only capable of being in the “now” is eminently inspiring & exhausting to the ego at the same time.  I mean, I so disliked my mind when it attempted to carry me away from where the girls were in the moment.  I might compare it to the initial phases of meditating.  The girls are capable of setting the scene, getting it all ready to paint a masterpiece at the dinning room table.   The paints are out we have gathered the paper, the glasses of water, the absorbent towels to pick up the inevitable  spills.  Our treasures are sitting there waiting for the gooey white glue used to stick the colored leaves onto the rainbow of poster paint  & voila!  The project is over.

Onto reading a book.  And just when I think we are getting to the exciting part, just about the time when the three bears come home and are about to discover the poor innocent child unsuspectingly asleep in the baby bears bed—-“Pepere, can I have a strawberry?”

“Right now”, I think to myself–“this very minute just before the apex of the story,  just before the denouement of the 4th act, you can’t possibly mean we stop this activity in the middle of now, to cater to another wish and whim?”  But, yes–that is exactly what the moment calls for and while we are at it maybe get a blanket so we can snuggle to finish the story.

Our granddaughters and grandsons are so able to appreciate the sensations they experience within.  They are capable of jumping into any stream and following it down-river.  The moment and the immediate next seems to be a call from the wild, from the deep internals of an organism able to discern what it needs and what it wants.

So, what can we learn from the tree-hugging urchins, from these rock-climbing children of the moment?

We can learn that if we allow the moment to be filled with what we love, we can have paradise right here, right now in the middle of all the urgent, very important, very grown up things on our agenda that just have to get done.  I need to let my children re-teach me to understand that a strawberry, right-now, may indeed be more important that discovering the end of the story.  Because, you see, they know that the end of the story is not important.  The end is always there to be pursued, and what is so great about the end anyway?   It is the middle of the now that really contains the excitement and the vitality of life.

And who are we to be so worried and so fearful, have ye faith, we are told.  Are you not at least as important as the lilies of the field:

“SO WHY DO YOU WORRY ABOUT CLOTHING? CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD, HOW THEY GROW: THEY NEITHER TOIL NOR SPIN; AND YET I SAY TO YOU THAT EVEN SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY WAS NOT ARRAYED LIKE ONE OF THESE.” MATTHEW 6:27-29