God is present

‘Mindfulness,’ writes the Buddhist monastic Sister Annabel Laity, ‘helps you to notice the wonders of life because you are not being carried away by thoughts about the past or the future.’ (1)

Sister Annabel was the first Western person to be ordained as a disciple of the great Zen teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who founded the Plum Village community. We recently visited the Being Peace Practice Centre, the new spiritual home for Plum Village practitioners in the UK. And I’m very happy to share that we will be leading a retreat there with Sister Annabel in September.

Mindfulness – awareness – helps us to notice the wonders of life, because it helps us to be present, to be present for and open to the wonders of life.

“Do you believe God is here?”

A few months before my father passed on last year, I visited him in his care home. I didn’t realise that a very nice woman would be leading a singing session for everyone.

Before the first hymn, she looked at each of us in turn with her kind eyes and asked, ‘Do you believe God is here?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Anywhere in particular?’ she asked. Before I could stop myself, I answered, ‘No. I think God is everywhere in particular.’

‘OK,’ she said, ‘Do you think there will be a special moment in the future when Jesus will arrive in glory?’ ‘I think God is always arriving,’ I replied, ‘Our life, the whole of creation, is God-arriving.’ At that point my wife gave me a gentle kick, and we moved on to sing our first hymn.

In his book No Time Like the Present, Jack Kornfield writes of how a television crew interviewed the Dalai Lama at a conference on compassion in Washington DC: ‘With the big cameras and lights pointed at him, the news anchor […] noted that the Dalai Lama’s book The Art of Happiness had spent many months on the New York Times bestseller list. Looking for a newsworthy angle, the anchor asked, ‘So, could you tell our viewers about one of the happiest times in your life?’ The Dalai Lama paused and reflected, his eyes twinkling. Then he said, with a laugh, ‘I think now.’ (2)

Everything is a sign

When we meditate, we don’t look for ‘signs and wonders’ (John 4:48). We don’t look for anything in particular to happen. We practice sitting with open, receptive awareness. We practice being present in the present, that we might come see that everything is a sign, that life itself is a wonder. As Rowan Williams put it so beautifully, as we become more present, we come to see that ‘creation around [us], within [us], the creation that [we] are, the creation [we] are part of, is all God acting, God loving, God inviting, here and now.’

‘I once walked the six miles from my house to Kent Lake in less than four hours,’ said the poet Barbara Ruth, ‘but that wasn’t my best time. My personal best is eight hours and fifteen minutes. That includes time resting with a lizard sunning on the rocks; writing down a dream starting at Mt. Barnabe; listening to a woodpecker knock herself against the tree that harbours the osprey’s nest.’ (3)

Noticing the wonders of life

In these times of great uncertainty in the world, when it’s so easy to be caught up in anxious thoughts about the future, it’s important to take time each day to come home to the present moment, to re-centre in the peace of our heart, to allow ourselves to ‘notice the wonders of life.’ Something as simple as the warmth of a cup of tea, cupped between our hands, can be truly wonderful, if we allow ourselves to really notice it.

There is great peace to be found in simply saying our prayer word and following our breath. Little by little, moment by moment, we become increasing present to what is present, to who is present.

‘Behold’ (‘See’) says Christ, ‘I am with you always’ (Matthew 28:20).