Perfectly Present
I am, at present, reading a book called Time and Despondency , by Nicole Roccas, and before this I had read Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing , by Søren Kierkegaard. About both of these I intend to write future commentary. But for now, both have me contemplating the proper—for Christians—meaning and experience of “being present.” Such clarification recalls me to my latent ambivalence to this term, which properly warns against the universal modern sickness of constant distractedness, but which also strikes a dismissive note toward purpose and meaning. So I thought I’d sketch, briefly, what it is to take each moment as it comes, to be fully part of it, then to let it go and move fully into the next moment . And that is the domesticated dog. A friend once observed that every day— every day—when he came home his dog would light up, happy to see him. He’d then get a dog bone, and his dog would be so excited. Every time. ...