1% For Presence
There is a book that has been popping up everywhere I look recently— Brian Doyle’s collection of essays called One Long River of Song— and we finally got our hands on a used copy last week.
It’s full of beautifully crafted insights and observations that are funny and moving and poignant.
It begins with an essay that seems at first to be about hummingbirds and then the anatomy of hearts and then what breaks our hearts open.
There is one about the birth of his twin sons, one where he articulates his anger toward God, one about the tides and time and the sea of our love.
I have been riveted by his words all week.
They have made me laugh at loud, often at the very same moment they’ve moved me to tears.
And there is one aspect of every single essay that has had me marveling again and again:
They are all rooted in detail.
In the small.
The seemingly mundane.
One piece centers around the feel of his child’s grip on his left pinky finger and it is so incredibly moving that I couldn’t finish without pausing to wipe my eyes.
His left pinky finger.
Really?
But that is the power of presence.
Of staying awake in our lives.
Of slowing our hurry long enough to pay attention to what is now.
I’ve been talking all month about where we can bring tiny, 1% change to our lives.
This might be the most powerful yet:
How can we slow down 1% in our lives?
What would that look like?
1%…
That's less that a full second of each minute.
Less than one minute of each hour.
We have a million and two things on our to-do lists every day.
Some of them have urgency but no real importance.
But some of them are, indeed, very important to us.
Tasks that create the frameworks upon which we build meaningful lives or fulfill our purpose or calling.
Tossing our to-do lists to the wind is neither realistic nor particularly helpful.
But sometimes they do feel as though they’re taking over our lives.
Our days become filled with hurrying from one thing to the next.
They become a blur that begins to leak meaning out of small tears we don’t notice.
What if we looked for the telltale drips and patched a tear or two?
What would that look like?
For me, this morning, it has looked like:
reveling in how my warm flannel sheets felt against the skin of my legs in that moment between waking and getting out of bed
laughing at the way Chili groans like an old man when he stretches into the classic “down dog” position before shaking out his collar and trotting over to say hi
the bitterness and heat of coffee sliding down my throat
the small noises of Justin moving about his morning, the bang of his coffee mug and the openings of doors and the sliding of chairs, as I write
luxuriating in the feel of pen moving on paper as I do my morning journaling
Nothing major.
Nothing dramatic or particularly exciting.
Just 1% slower.
Just 1% more present.
And it made my morning significantly more beautiful and fulfilling.
I’ll leave you with this fraction of a sentence from the pinky essay (his sentences are an utter joy of rule-breaking wonder):
“It seems to me that angels and bodhisattvas are everywhere available for consultation if only we can see them clear; they are unadorned, and joyous, and patient, and radiant, and luminous, and not disguised or hidden or filtered in any way whatsoever…”
What angels and bodhisattvas are available to you, in this very moment, for consultation?
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Beliefs & Misbeliefs: Inspecting Our Foundations
March 13, 2021
11am-3pm EST
$79 early-bird pricing through February 13, 2021