Tag: mindfulness

Waiting . . .

What are you waiting for?

Waiting is a pause, a looking away from the now, an interval, a delay.

Waiting can be a movement away from mindfulness of the present moment as we wait for something to come that is missing from our life right now. Or it can be a momentary pause to breathe, settle, ground ourselves, and to be ready for what is coming.

I have often wasted time waiting for something to arrive that I thought would make my life better, and in doing so, I have missed seeing or experiencing whatever was happening in the present. I waited for difficult situations to pass, for an expected job offer to arrive, for a tough class to be finished, for the retreat I was preparing for to begin, for the root canal appointment (!) to be over and done with. And the time I spent waiting — at least the time I spent just wishing that whatever I was waiting for would arrive now — was lost time when I was not paying attention to anything but avoiding the present moment.

Waiting sometimes feels like punishment. It is actually avoidance, whether conscious or not. When I began to use spiritual practices like meditation and mindful walking, my awareness of the fullness of the present moment astonished me. What I suddenly heard, smelled, felt in my body, saw all around me was an abundance of life. Birds I hadn’t heard, dappled light changing patterns of color and light and shadow, the distant train whistle, the softness of grass in contrast to the roughness of dry ground, clouds that raced and others that moseyed. I was dazzled and delighted. With my normal future-oriented consciousness (or unconsciousness!) and goal directed pace, I missed so much. And Creation offered so much fullness that I hadn’t seen, touched, tasted, heard, felt.

So, am I now transformed and fully conscious every moment of every day? Far from it. I get distracted by worries and waiting. I settle into a funk now and then. I rush to an appointment without tasting the rain-misted taste of the air. I forget to listen for birdcall or look for what shade of blue or teal or grey the sky is today.

But I find myself waiting much less often for something to happen or arrive. I am better at remembering to pause and breathe and step outside more often to spend a mindful moment just being present. And it changes my day every time I do.

Did you notice . . . ?

Kindness.hands

For each act of hatred that makes the news, a dozen of acts of goodness go unseen in our world.                           –Bishop Desmond Tutu

Each time I taught my graduate counseling class in Spiritual Formation, I would teach the spiritual practice of walking mindfully.   Students were already comfortable with sitting meditation and the breathwork that is part of mindfulness.  So after explaining that they would be going outside for 15 minutes to practice walking mindfully, I let them go to it. 

I watched them from a short distance. 

Some students walked at a very slow pace, taking their time to feel the solidity of the ground beneath them.  Some students would take off their shoes and wiggle their feet in the soft spring grass, then pick a blade, sniff it, and carry it with them as they walked.  Some students walked a couple of steps and then stopped beneath a tree or the clouded sky and gaze at what was in front of or above them for minutes at a time.  

After 15 minutes, I called them back to the classroom with a bell, and had them journal their experience.  Then, anyone who wanted to could share what this was like.

“I walk this path every day to this building, but I never noticed the dappling of shade and sun until today,” one student said.

“I heard birds calling,” another said.  “Are they always there?  I never noticed them before on campus.”

“I’m always in a rush to get to class and I realized today that I miss so much around me,” a young woman said in a choked voice. “What else am I missing?”

All of us are rushing somewhere, or caught by our screens, or thinking about what we need to do 10 minutes or an hour in the future.  What are we missing?

What small acts of kindness did we receive today that we rushed through and barely noticed?   A smile when we took our freshly brewed coffee from the clerk at the coffee shop?  A door held open by . . . was it a boy or a woman?  We didn’t notice.  

A maintenance person whistling while emptying the circular files in the computer room?  A girl with a My Little Pony backpack stooping down repeatedly to pick up pieces of paper trash and running to the trash can at the end of the parking lot to toss her balled up trash in it, yelling “Score!”  

Little pieces of goodness all around us.  I’m betting there are 10 . . . 15 . . . maybe more every day that I fail to notice — and fail to affirm.    Affirming, noticing, appreciating with words or gestures adds positive energy to those small acts of goodness and establishes a connection with the person offering goodness.   

In times like these when it seems easier to see the world filled with dark, diminishing, and destructive words and acts that tear down rather than build up, perhaps small acts of goodness that are barely noticeable can offer hope that love and light can win.