“Today I will live in the moment,” the cartoon reads. “Unless the moment is unpleasant, in which case I will eat a cookie.” We’ve all been there, right?
Mindfulness is gaining a lot of attention lately. Mindfulness is an age-old practice of paying attention. In mindfulness, we focus our awareness on the present moment in a non-judgmental way, and then acknowledge and accept whatever comes to us.
Given the chaos, negativity and dysfunction in our world today, it’s no secret that many of us want (and need) to focus on the present moment (and God’s presence in that moment) instead of operating on stress-induced autopilot. Too often we stew over what has happened in the past, fret about what is to come or worry about things over which we have no control. When we don’t live in the present, we can miss so much of the greatness of God’s good creation, experienced in other people, in nature, in pets, in art. When we don’t live in the present, we can miss the myriad promptings of the Holy Spirit.
This message is excerpted from “Minding the moment” by Linda Post Bushkofsky in the October 2019 Gather magazine.
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