Life made up of Moments

Re-Blogged from the living way by Dave Brisbin

Someone recently told me that he needed excitement in his life, that there was nothing to look forward to. Someone else was telling me that she was completely dry, and the work she used to love was uninspiring and dead to her, that the coworkers and clients she still loved deserved more and better than she could deliver. I could certainly understand. I’m sure we’ve all been there, done that: feeling the edges of burnout or ennui crowding into the corners of our eyes, threatening hostile take over. Truth is, regardless of how we view them, our lives are made of moments. Nothing more. Just a string of moments from birth to death, or better, a single moment constantly changing in its detail and composition. And most of those moments, or the details of that one moment are usually pretty ordinary, commonplace–what we’d call boring from a certain point of view.

Does your faith life make you feel like this?

We keep looking for our moments to inspire us, to fill us from the outside with the meaning we can’t find on the inside. But this moment right now, like an island, is self-contained–if we don’t bring meaning here, we won’t find it here. The circumstances of our moments have no intrinsic meaning. Everything in life is equally meaningless–or meaningful–depending on what we bring to the party. If we spend our moments waiting for or trying to manufacture those rare peak, “exciting” moments, then our lives become flyover country, like the plains of Nebraska we fly over to get to the coasts…and all those precious moments viewed from 30,000 feet appears flat and dimensionless. But we are all just a moment away from transformation. And when we can simply revel in the warm updraft from a grate ballooning our skirts, when we can come back down to earth and fill our moments with our presence, our moments will be full of Presence–exciting and meaningful…and not a moment before.

Dave Brisbin
[03.26.09]