Sacred Moments
- Posted by: Joe Williams
A Saguaro starting to bloom in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. A Saguaro will bloom every year, whether or not it gets rain through the winter season. That’s a pretty good approach to life, isn’t it?
A few weeks ago I went about preparing handout material for the September 21-26 Dialogue Workshop, our 106th session.
I have a three-page checklist of every handout and every logistical detail that needs to be done–after all, this is a planning workshop!
There are some 50 different items for each person, totaling almost 150 pages per person. It typically take almost two full days to compile and print it all.
In preparing for each Workshop, I add something new, rewrite a few things, change the handout design every now and then, and leave other pieces exactly the same. I go between computers and our workhorse Xante printer like a prisoner pacing his cell. But with one exception: I actually enjoy it.
It’s a sacred moment.
I look on these not as handouts, but as part of me. They represent my thinking and as such I treat them as gifts, rather than mere handouts. Of course, part of me expects participants to receive them the same way. Expectations are always the rub.
I’ve learned that life is filled with sacred moments like these. And to me, they are found more and more in the little things rather than the big things. My sacred moments consist of having one of my grandchildren climb on my lap; watching them play soccer–and watching my son, John, who is now 40 but still plays like he diid when he was on the varsity; mowing the yard and looking up seeing Barbara in the garden; when Buddy, my yellow lab falls asleep with his head on my foot under the table; being alone in the forest of Saguaro cactus in Arizona; watching participants work together during the Workshop–and then later when they saddle up for team penning; being present at Oklahoma State basketball game in hallowed Gallagher-Iba Arena with my youngest son, Matt; having a meal with our friends; having all 12 of our immediate family at home around the round table for celebrations. There are so many.
Our family enjoying a sacred moment on Captiva Island, Florida last summer. Okay, if you’ve ever gotten this many adults and kids to sit still for a photo, you know I am stretching things a bit to say that this was a sacred moment…but those days and nights on that sea shell island certainly were. And this photo reflects it.
But sacred moments extend further than just these. I’ve experienced them in a restaurant with the person serving my meal, at an airport watching a mother traveling with a baby, in the silence of a Sunday morning reading the paper.
Sacred moments are all around us, just waiting to be discovered. But to find them, we must still our minds and quit thinking. We simply think too much. We must silence the noise in our world in order to feel. And to feel, we must learn to let go, to empty ourselves in order to have room for everything else, everything that matters the most.
Sacred moments are all around us. Everyplace we go is a sacred place. All we have to do is quieten ourselves in order to see and then see again what is there before us all the time.
Where are your sacred moments? When do they occur?
