Healing Presence

On this "personal sabbatical" (as I'm calling my current transitional experience), I wake up in the morning and ask, what shall I do today?   That's a question that has to do more with presence  than with activity.  I'm asking myself how shall I be present today?  To what shall I be present?  What will present itself to me today?

In the past week, I've been present to my father's packing up his home to prepare to move.   I discovered that I enjoyed being present to the needs of the day...the tasks, the memories, the listening, the feelings.  I'm home now and am discerning how to be present to what is emerging in my own life.

Presence is about nothing more than just showing up, being open and aware.  Maybe it's about taking a step out even if I'd rather stay hidden. It's about stepping off the beaten path, or away from the usual current flow of flurried activities we engage in without thought or intention.  Presence is  about opening up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, there indeed is a power greater than myself that will meet me.  I won't just show up and no one else comes, or that I'll fall off a cliff into oblivion.  Presence is about discovering with some assurance that I'm not alone, that there is some deeper purpose and meaning I can't necessarily see.

That's a healing place.  In fact, perhaps the place of Presence is the MOST healing place there is.  Just showing up to what is. I need that! I'm usually too busy focusing on what will be in the future, or what was in the past. We as a society are so use to thinking that our healing requires us to DO something...to act in some way, to fix, to solve, to medicate, to operate, to discipline, to repent.  But, really...the healing comes when we can just be.  In being present to simply this present moment, we can let go of expectations and anxieties and fears that tighten us, that close us off, that make us cling and strain, and get stuck, and drain us of life's energy.   Instead, our Presence, allows us to be a creative partner in responding to what this grand universe and its Creator might present to us on any given day...at any given moment....without critique or prejudice.

Hmm, easier said than done? Maybe. Maybe it takes a personal sabbatical to allow the freedom, time and permission needed to just be present, to experience it's healing treasures. I hope I'll be able to carry some of this back into the flurry of activities and responsibilities when I step back into that flow.  But, there is always Sabbath, the day of Presence.  If nothing else, perhaps one day in every seven I'll be able to manage!