Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 1:01am
Each moment a lifetime
Column: Our Place in the Universe
This column originally was published on June 7, 2007.
Listening to the violin soar up and up, into a high sweet vibrato, stops my breath and brings God down to earth, if only for the length of that one clear note. Achingly sweet and, at the same time, heart-wrenchingly painful, the music opens my soul. The joy comes from experiencing a moment of ecstasy; the pain from knowing that it lasts just one moment.
How does one stay in the moment so that the ecstasy lasts a lifetime? It's a centering that brings along with it the peace that means oneness with the Beloved. Though He never left, yet I feel as if He has left me one thousand times. Thus the violin is a remembering, bringing me back into the reality of oneness.
Now the trick is to remember that moment of ecstasy when the TV is blaring, and the kids need attention, and the cooking must be done and the animals fed. I can go to the bedroom to recapture the moment and get called two minutes later. Then the phone rings or the chicken is done, the dryer is buzzing, or I'm just plain worried about not getting the column written.
How do I stay in the moment and let each mundane interruption be the connection or catalyst that leads to God? It all starts with breathing. I find that it is like love. When I love my husband, my daughter, my friend, it seems to be easier to love others, to love God. With my heart open, that one moment is interwoven within the relationship, naturally making it three-dimensional within time and space.
With breathing I stand up straighter; I become more centered. I slow down to notice; my chest expands, and with it my heart. I become more three-dimensional. Rumi says: "Most people only look for the way when they hurt. Pain is a fine path to the unknowable. But today is different. Today the quality we call splendor puts on human clothes, walks through the door, closes it behind, and sits down with us in this companionship."
The violin helps me escape from the world, but not from myself. I must live every moment with myself, and so realize it is only through my Self that I will find God. "No one comes to the Father except through me ... and I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:6-20). What did this carpenter do but live in the moment, never escape himself, and breathe?
"Then He made him complete and breathed into him of His spirit, and made for you the ears and the eyes and the heart" (Koran 32.9). When we breathe, we mirror the Beloved, breathing Him in, becoming a living being. "And Jesus said, 'Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.' And with that he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'" (John 20:21-22).
We sometimes worry about living without food and water, but living without the breath of life would last only a matter of moments. And there is nothing more mundane and worldly that we can do than breathing. Take this outward manifestation of inner intention and inhale it deep within yourself. This is how the moment becomes a lifetime.
Let my intention in breathing, in eating, in sleeping — my comings and my goings — reflect You, oh Lord of all Creation. Let the common become sacred. For as You made me from mud, breathing Your life into me, so let me find Your life in the mud of this world, in the commonplace, the tedious, and the difficult. Let me rise to the occasion like a sweet current of wind on a hot summer's day.
For Your comings and goings are like the breeze, seeming to waft and wane, but ever present nonetheless. You fill my lungs with life, and overflow my heart with the beauty of the dancing leaves. I fly with this wind, and need no wings, for I am gently wrapped within the bosom of your love. I feel Your warm breath on my neck as my daughter kisses me goodnight, and my heart beats in rhythm to the breath of the man sleeping beside me.
Tomorrow Your breath will blow away the commotion of today, and I will smile to watch the wind playing hide and seek with sun and cloud.
— — —
Anne E. Ulvestad is a free-lance writer residing in Maryland. She has her masters in earth literacy, and is available for public lectures and group presentations and rituals on Spirituality and the Environment. Anne can be reached at {email anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com}anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Anne E. Ulvestad.
Listening to the violin soar up and up, into a high sweet vibrato, stops my breath and brings God down to earth, if only for the length of that one clear note. Achingly sweet and, at the same time, heart-wrenchingly painful, the music opens my soul. The joy comes from experiencing a moment of ecstasy; the pain from knowing that it lasts just one moment.
How does one stay in the moment so that the ecstasy lasts a lifetime? It's a centering that brings along with it the peace that means oneness with the Beloved. Though He never left, yet I feel as if He has left me one thousand times. Thus the violin is a remembering, bringing me back into the reality of oneness.
Now the trick is to remember that moment of ecstasy when the TV is blaring, and the kids need attention, and the cooking must be done and the animals fed. I can go to the bedroom to recapture the moment and get called two minutes later. Then the phone rings or the chicken is done, the dryer is buzzing, or I'm just plain worried about not getting the column written.
How do I stay in the moment and let each mundane interruption be the connection or catalyst that leads to God? It all starts with breathing. I find that it is like love. When I love my husband, my daughter, my friend, it seems to be easier to love others, to love God. With my heart open, that one moment is interwoven within the relationship, naturally making it three-dimensional within time and space.
With breathing I stand up straighter; I become more centered. I slow down to notice; my chest expands, and with it my heart. I become more three-dimensional. Rumi says: "Most people only look for the way when they hurt. Pain is a fine path to the unknowable. But today is different. Today the quality we call splendor puts on human clothes, walks through the door, closes it behind, and sits down with us in this companionship."
The violin helps me escape from the world, but not from myself. I must live every moment with myself, and so realize it is only through my Self that I will find God. "No one comes to the Father except through me ... and I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:6-20). What did this carpenter do but live in the moment, never escape himself, and breathe?
"Then He made him complete and breathed into him of His spirit, and made for you the ears and the eyes and the heart" (Koran 32.9). When we breathe, we mirror the Beloved, breathing Him in, becoming a living being. "And Jesus said, 'Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.' And with that he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'" (John 20:21-22).
We sometimes worry about living without food and water, but living without the breath of life would last only a matter of moments. And there is nothing more mundane and worldly that we can do than breathing. Take this outward manifestation of inner intention and inhale it deep within yourself. This is how the moment becomes a lifetime.
Let my intention in breathing, in eating, in sleeping — my comings and my goings — reflect You, oh Lord of all Creation. Let the common become sacred. For as You made me from mud, breathing Your life into me, so let me find Your life in the mud of this world, in the commonplace, the tedious, and the difficult. Let me rise to the occasion like a sweet current of wind on a hot summer's day.
For Your comings and goings are like the breeze, seeming to waft and wane, but ever present nonetheless. You fill my lungs with life, and overflow my heart with the beauty of the dancing leaves. I fly with this wind, and need no wings, for I am gently wrapped within the bosom of your love. I feel Your warm breath on my neck as my daughter kisses me goodnight, and my heart beats in rhythm to the breath of the man sleeping beside me.
Tomorrow Your breath will blow away the commotion of today, and I will smile to watch the wind playing hide and seek with sun and cloud.
— — —
Anne E. Ulvestad is a free-lance writer residing in Maryland. She has her masters in earth literacy, and is available for public lectures and group presentations and rituals on Spirituality and the Environment. Anne can be reached at {email anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com}anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Anne E. Ulvestad.