Sacrament of the Present Moment
By Pat Stone


January is named after Janus, the two-headed Roman god who looks both forward and back.

While that may be a good concept for a month that starts the calendar, I no longer think it's a good one for my life. Oh, I could look back, all the way from being a naked four-year-old trying to tricycle my way back to our old house, to courting Becky for six months before we even had a date, to . . .

I could look forward, to having our firstborn finish college this summer, to seeing one of the kids get married, to . . .

But since I turned 50, I no longer care so much for looking either forward or back. Things changed when I turned 50.

One day, I was a 49-year-old, simply connecting the dots of each day:
  • Get up.
  • Shave.
  • Help get the kids off to school.
  • Do back exercises.
  • Do devotions.
  • Read breakfast and eat paper (OK, so I'm not too sharp first thing in the morning).
  • Check e-mails.
  • Return phone calls from yesterday.
  • Call potential new advertisers.
  • Start packing up 105 ad kits.
  • Write new consulting proposal.
  • Take dogs on short hike.
  • Work on flyer design.
  • Run 478 gift-renewal mailing labels.
  • Drop work, pick up Tucker.
  • Take Tucker to his cello lesson.
  • Take Tucker to his indoor soccer practice.
  • Take Tucker to his basketball game.
  • Come home and eat dinner.
  • Build a fire.
  • Get Tucker to bed.
  • Do the dishes.
  • Help Sammy study vocab.
  • Work some more on the ad kit mailing.
  • Go to bed.
The next day, one foot had stepped on the grave and was beginning to sink in. 50. Fifty. 1, 2, 3, 4-50. Where did it go? I can't kid myself now-it's downhill from here. At 50, boyhood is way over and guyhood is waning fast. Old agehood cometh. And not just old age, but what comes after old age, you know . . .

I'll be honest. I found turning 50 depressing. 30 was easy. 40 wasn't much. But 50, 50 was serious. My brother went into a six-month depression when he turned 50. He dropped out of touch. Got mad at our parents for being dead. Went into counseling.

I didn't go that far, but something happened. I felt heavier inside. More serious. And a little scared. I backed off of some things-like playing adult soccer (still a few hormone-heads out there who don't mind causing injuries.) I picked up on others (canoeing-better paddle while I still can!). I worried more about money (will colleges chew up our nest egg?). I was not pleased to find myself feeling blue about turning gray. I've enjoyed every stage of life so far, found blessings in everything from being a kid to parenting them. AARPdom, I told myself, will have many blessings as well, from grandchildren to grand reflections. I tried telling myself to shake it off-"Cheer up, Pat!" But this nagging sense of mortality didn't go away. Turning 50 was like hearing the button click on the stopwatch of life.

That was a year and a half ago, though. In recent months, I've begun to realize that hitting 5-0 may actually have been a blessing. Anna Quinlen writes in A Short Guide to a Happy Life, "Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us." I am beginning to gain this knowledge. The next step is to use it to become more aware of life. To try to live each moment consciously, each moment positively, each moment faithfully.

Back in the 17th century, Nicholas Herman (later called Brother Lawrence) hired on in the kitchen of a French Carmelite monastery as "a servant of the servants of God." Somehow, this ordinary, uneducated man, whose only distinction was to be "lord of the pots and pans," became focused on having a "habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God." He turned every mundane pot-scrubbing chore into what he called "the sacrament of the present moment" and became renowned for living each and every moment in joy with the Lord.

I haven't been doing that. God's been one of those two dozens dots to connect in the day. I'd make myself set aside a few minutes to focus on the purpose and meaning of life . . . then I'd immediately forget all about it and go on with kids, chores, work, play, aggravations, pleasures-whatever was right in front of my face that instant. I flicked my faith life, my real life, off like a light bulb.

What a mistake. Why not live fully, consciously? Make the most I can of the days, months, or years I have! I don't have to walk through life looking down at my feet. I can look up and out, with both my eyes and my heart. What a gift!

So here it is. I don't want to spend January 1, 2001, looking forward or looking back. I'm not going to make a New Year's Resolution. I don't even want to make a Whole Life's Resolution. No, I want to make an Each Moment's Resolution. I want to learn to live each moment deliberately, faithfully, kindly, and joyously-to cherish it, rejoice in it, be in it.

When I step outside and winter air
      stings my nose,
when the printer jams,
when Jesse phones from college to
      say she's had a good week,
when the dogs moonscape the lawn,
when I'm floating down a river
      surrounded by ripple song,
when a telemarketer interrupts my
      writing,
when my wife beams at me with her
      so-cheerful eyes,
when our youngest tells us at dinner he
      has a long-term project on
      Ireland—due tomorrow,
when the chainsaw works,
when I'm rushing down our dirt road
      and our single-mother neighbor
      has yet another flat tire,
when I lift my head off the pillow in
      morning and lay it back down
      at night,
I want God to remind me that this
      very moment is a precious,
      precious gift.
That's my resolution. What's yours?