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Don't miss the moment climbing steps to nowhere
"Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever. " Horace Mann
Today on the way to school my youngest asked me an interesting question: "When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?"
When I thought about it I realized that, while I always wanted to write, there was one other thing that captivated my imagination - being an archeologist. I was entranced with things of the past, the older the better. I believe I still am. My father nurtured in my soul a love of the mysterious and of things ancient - the statues of Easter Island, the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois, the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, Stonehenge in England. The list is endless.
On a more realistic plane my romance with things old includes furniture, houses, books, stone walls, and most especially stone stairs that end as mysteriously as they begin.
We've all seen them - on the grounds of some historic site or among the renovated buildings of a spiritual retreat center. Or perhaps, if one is really fortunate, they are stumbled across while walking along the banks of the local canal, remnants of a life that once was and a history that somehow now connects with our own. It is easy to be enamored of the past, to live in the fantasy of it, the memories real or imagined have the ability to be molded by the machinery of our minds. Sometimes this is good, often it is creative, but when applied to the day-to-day movement of our personal lives, this process can mire us in memories and prevent our recognizing the holiness of the present moment. The past should not be forgotten - past moments, past loves, past losses, have shaped us into who we are, have formed our perspective and our behaviors -- but to come to a stand still in our past is to interrupt the journey into our future.
Also, there are those sad instances when people give up the present to focus solely on the future. My parents, like many, lost much in planning so great a part of what they would enjoy for the day when they retired. Ultimately, my mother retired when cancer got the best of her; my father spent his retirement caring for her, rarely leaving the house, and then he died before she did. Neither got to do the things they planned their whole lives to do.
Most sorely missed were those opportunities when we, as a family, could have spent time together and didn't because we allowed some seemingly pressing concern to interfere with the "now" of our relationship -- and my children were the ones who lost more than anyone in the time they would have spent wrapped in the love of a grandparent.
I once received a prayer card from a priest carrying the simple piece of prose that spoke of God as "I am", not "I was" or "I will be" and in that, serving as the greatest example of the holiness and preciousness of now.
To live in the present was a hard-learned lesson for me that came about through a variety of painful losses. So now I make every effort to stay aware of the holiness of a moment -- the present moment -- because if someone says to me, "Mary, you're going to die tomorrow," I won't be sad that I wasted today; that someone's heart wasn't happier, lighter, more at peace because of my presence.
If I am going to be someone's memory, I want it to be a beautiful one.
________________________________
Mary Morrell is the author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press; Things My Father Taught Me, a bi-weekly column that appears in several Catholic newspapers, I'll Walk With God, a monthly newsletter published by the Metuchen Diocesan Office of Religious Education, and Mary is a writer for Real Faith TV, produced by the Diocese of Trenton, Office of Communication.
Contact
Diocese of Metuchen
http://diometuchen.org
NJ, US
Mary Morrell - associate director,office of religious education, 732 562-1990
mmorrell@diometuchen.org
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