Moments

Twenty inches tall, chubby and bald, he pursed full lips and narrowed his eyes.  “Boots off” he said with the full conviction of his two and. half years.  They were tiny firefighter boots, just like his Dad’s, the young mom explained.

She was perched on a Starbucks stool, a paper cup hot chocolate in one hand and leaning over the text.  Her ringlets were drawn back in a ponytail, and she read with remarkable intensity.  And then, she lifted the chapter book with incredulity.  “You will not believe this!”

Rich and defiant, her eyes were steady and calm.  Pride spilled onto the project; she was delighted with the outcome.  A shy smile appeared: she had conquered the obstacles and objections, the reservations and te criticisms.

Tiny snapshots of time, moments of grace for bystanders, openings granted to the attentive.  There is a sweetness, a tender humanity in each encounter.  Such moments are reminders of what is held in common, what matters in life.  Somehow, the movement is tender and invites more than the expected.

Moments often slip by unnoticed, unaddressed.  In a frenetically digital world, just seeing and looking, observation and attentiveness are  arts  unknown more than lost.  But the first glimpse invites a second and then a third, and then a fourth.

And so it is with what is sacred.  The first glimpses are just that, one tempting the next and so on.  And each requires being seen and known and recognized, and then there is the choice to be made: to look more deeply, to be more attentive, or to walk away with neither interest or concern.  To imagine that there are realities embedded in the digital experience is to discover that there is more to what is seen, more to what can be known and understood.

Somehow, this is the same journey through all the ages:  learning to know the more, to discover the moment, to begin at least to understand what is really there.  In a moment.  In this moment.