In the Moment

We celebrate Mother Teresa who once said, “…we can do small things with great love.”  Her way of living “the little way” has brought her to this extraordinary moment of canonization – which, at the very least, is a recognition that greatness is most often the result of purposeful, consistent action.  “A big shot is just a little shot who kept on shooting” is the way American business philosopher Zig Ziglar put it.  Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but such observations about greatness serve as a reminder that greatness – extraordinary ways of living – are accessible to all.  This is for you and for me.  You were made with this.

“You’ve got great potential.”  Ever heard that before?  It’s funny-strange that this phrase in English can be used as everything from an encouragement to a backhanded insult.  But there is a secret genius in this idea of potential.  What we might be is already resident within us.

I think that part of the genius is the workman like virtue in this way of thinking.  Like a great sculptor who can “see” in the block of marble the figure that could be; potential is the “might be” of a life.  The artist knows that this stone has potential and its potential is unlike any other block of stone.  And so, with time and energy the stone’s potential is realized in a carved figure that achieves the artist’s purpose.

Unlocking potential is an almost natural, almost automatic process that takes place over an extended period of time.  Just as is happening before our eyes with our own children, the infant grows to be a woman. We can’t stop this, even if we wanted to.  But we don’t want to – that would be unnatural.  We want out children to grow.  We want them to “achieve their potential”.  We want that all of the potential vested in our tiny baby girl will one day be made into an actual woman.  So we experience this transition from an original “state” to the final “state.  We go from “A” to “B”.  And we say that the person has “grown up”…, the child has matured…, the potential has been achieved – or made actual.  Potency to actual – this is what we mean.

It takes time.  “Before you know it they’ll be grown”.  “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it”.  And we miss it anyway.  What happened to the time?

And that’s almost the real question.  What happened to the time?

When your “self” relates to objects in your field, it’s not relating to time, it’s relating to things in time.  Time is a measure of change.  Change happens when things move.  The conscious “self” is always on the move – it can’t stop moving.

So for a “self”, potential exists differently.  Not in some past or present state that may or may not be made actual in some future state.  Your “self” doesn’t have a past “state” or any possible future “state”.  Self has only the present moment in relation to some object it has encountered in its field.  And there is only ever one solitary question that really matters – What is your “self” going to do with this object that it has been given in this moment?

Like his master, the apostle says some pretty outlandish things.  “Anything not done out of faith is sin”, he says.  What am I supposed to do with that?  I can’t live in the confessional.

Sin is lack.  More specifically, it is a lack of faith.  Even more specifically, it is a lack to convert the potential of a moment with respect to some encountered thing.  God asked Adam of every animal – “what are you going to name this?”  Adam was free to call the animal anything he wanted.  But to have refused to name one of these animals would have been a sin.  To have not entered into the possibility of that moment would have left him, and the world, poorer – less than either could have been.  The potential in that moment would have gone unrealized, and like the sin he finally succumbed to, it could never be fully recovered.

The prophet said, “Now, is the time of God’s favor.  Now is the day of salvation”.  “Now” has always been the point with God.  The thing in the present moment – what is given.  That’s all you and I will ever have.

But that doesn’t mean the past, or even the future doesn’t matter.  They both have their place.  Yet abusing either is as treacherous as it is common.

Our days with the children are filled with failures.  Just this morning, I missed the moment to wake up the twins in favor of some worthless gossip in the news.  I chose it.  I did it.  Now what?

I could take my awareness of my failing and dwell on it.  Letting the knowledge of my failure now become my object, I could spend the next moment relating to this knowledge filled with guilt for the original failure.  And I could spend the next moment after with another object – this time it’s my story – the story that I tell myself about myself.  And in this moment of relating to my story I become acutely aware that this is not the first time I have failed.  In fact, it isn’t even the first time that I failed this morning.

So now, in the next moment I am led from my past moments to reflect on my inadequacies – it seems that “I always fail”.  “I never not fail.”  And this realization settles into my mind and into the muscles in the back of my neck as stress.  I feel the weight of my failure physically, viscerally.  And in the next moment I can reflect on how I don’t feel well in my body.  Increasingly, how “I never feel well in my body”.  Every moment has weight.

It’s an hour later now.  I didn’t stop thinking.  I didn’t stop relating.  In fact, I’ve probably related to ten thousand objects over this collection of moments.  I don’t think I actually chose any of them.  My mind just wonders like that.

But the twins still need to be helped out of bed.  I vaguely remember having this thought before.  In frustration and even a tinge of anger I feel compelled to get to them and do what needs to be done.

And still I wonder where all the years went.  How they grew up right before my eyes but I almost failed to notice.  How the time passed so quickly.

My world, your world, is filled with objects that will always compete for priority, for attention.  So how can I discern what was given from that which is intruding and imposing?

This is the true heart of the question.  I can lament one more time about my failures and in that moment, once again fail to meet that which is truly given.  I can be like a surfer always trying to mount a wave that has already passed and then anguish that I missed it yet again.  But nobody actually gets a ride that way.  It’s only frustration.

But if I take my world, my field, as a whole and deliberately chose to focus on the most valuable thing available to me in this moment, now I am near that which is truly given.  And suddenly I can hear the voices of our twin boys calling out, wanting attention.

And I find what is ultimately given in this moment is two poopy diapers.  As I gently and deliberately cleanse my sons from their infantile soil, I reflect on how, despite my maturity, our condition is not really very different.  They soil their diapers.  I do it all in my head.

It’s station two in the way of the cross.  Jesus accepts the cross.  As Jesus the man, He accepted what was given.  Not that it was the only thing in His field.  He could have focused His attention elsewhere.  He could have thought of something else, or done something else.  But instead, He received what was given.  He accepted the cross because it was the most important thing in His field at that moment.  The potential of salvation uniquely borne in Him became actual then, in that moment.  The potential and the actual in that moment.

This way of givenness is not a new way.  Potential becomes an actual through action.  “Actual” and “action” and “this moment”.  Actual through action in this moment.  This is your greatness calling – and for you it’s not in Calcutta.