Here and Now

Do you have a few minutes?  Please stay, if you can, and savor some of the images of summer so far.

When I was a professional outside the home gal, I taught a number of courses for a local university.  One of the more fun classes I taught was a sort of introductory class for adults returning to complete their degree following an extended absence from the classroom.  One of the chapters in the required reading for the course focused on memory skills - how to build them, how to keep them.  And, it provided a list of 20 tips.  Each time I taught the course we'd do a lot of interactive experiential exercises to create multiple pathways for learning and then take a quiz to try and recall all 20.  I might score 60% now several several semesters removed from the classroom...?

One of the tips has had a lasting impression on me.

"Pay attention to your attention."

What am I thinking about right now?  What's going on here, right where I am?  What am I giving my attention to?  Am I focused on what I should be or am I wandering and allowing myself to become distracted?  How will I pay enough attention to this moment that I'll remember it?  Am I here right now?

Hence the post's title - Here and Now.  And for my former students who might stumble upon this little space of mine, I do also remember that one of the tips is "Be Here Now".  The ideas are quite similar.

This summer I'm trying to linger long in the moments we have.  So much is unanticipated and brand new.  And even though I feel like the world would tell me to worry because we have no steady source of income, the Lord has gently shepherded our hearts and is making real to us a feet on the ground understanding of, "Do not be anxious for anything".

There's been little time for words on the screen or page.  But the camera is always near and ready to capture and chronicle image where symbols are scant.

There'll be another season where life gives way to words and expression can be cultivated in sentence form.

For now however, sit a spell, soak it all in with me.  Savor life to the full giving thanks to the Giver of all good gifts who never leaves us nor forsakes us.  He is here.