Our grandmother’s home, a rambling old house with a huge garden, was a delightful part of our childhood summers. On warm August evenings, my sisters and I would take small jam jars and catch fireflies. They would flicker around one special corner of her lawn, small and harmless, delightful as they flicked their tail lights on an off. Our fun was being in their midst and perhaps catching a few in a jar. We’d only keep them for a minute and then having watched their little lights go on and off, release them again to the warm evening.

Last week I wrote about being blinded by Truth, but this week it’s about another reality, those moments that are like the flicker of a firefly. Moments are moments. So quick. They just happen and if I’m not slow enough, I’ll miss them. I believe like the fireflies, those precious moments are all around me, all the time. Will I be open to ‘catch’ them? The sunlight glistening on the raindrop hanging on the spider’s web; the light that dances through a dear one’s eye; the aroma of cedar filling the forest; the cloud passing down the mountainside; the clerk’s smile at the grocery store; the kindness of the woman on the Metro platform who asks me if I’m looking for the route to the airport; the kind invitation to go for a walk; the container of soup left on my doorstep; the line of poetry….. on and on …. Those moments that flow day in and day out, those moments that touch a place deep within.

Each flicker is precious. As Merton writes in ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’, ‘Every moment and every event of everyone’s life on earth plants something in his soul.’ Most of our moments are lost in the whirl of life. But still the Spirit continues to cast seeds. Will we catch them? And then release them? Release them so that their goodness, their holiness flows out into the world.

That’s my job, your job, our job as human beings. It’s to see the Light, to catch and release the light back into the world. Every day, all day. Catch and release. Breathe in the goodness all around us and release it again into the world.

Each moment is filled with holiness. Ah, to live within that God awareness.

Love and prayers for the journey

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living