The idea of a smile and kind words often strikes me. Too frequently I find myself hurrying through life with not much time fore even the smallest pause.

But when I do → the present moment has time to fill up. The fullness of any given moment moves it from the secular into the sacred.

As we string these sacred moments together → one moment placed carefully on the continuum of life after another — our lives become enriched, our neighbors benefit, and our communities thrive!

These moments are a blessing…and like Abraham we should view these blessings as our opportunity to bless others.

This thinking reminds me, also, of Moses when he notices the burning bush…he allowed room for that moment to be filled up → pausing within it to notice that, though on fire, the bush was not being consumed. It is in the midst of that single moment that the ordinary shifted to the extraordinary…where the secular became the sacred! Shoes are removed, sand presses upon the soles → G_d is present! Blessed be He!

We must begin to move towards pausing.

We live in a culture that calls for us to ‘milk’ every moment trading time as a commodity. Never fully present rather leaving a wake of dismembered and abused time — swept too quickly into the past while we already begin to hunt and feast on the moments that have yet to come.

So, how do we move from a consumer of time to a curator of it, a partner with it?

A phrase I’ve become fond of is ‘breathing in the moment’ – we need to be more within time – when we slow down we allow ourselves the opportunity to take in more information. There is an important piece of breathing and moments that I feel is also vital – Exhaling! 

Exhaling is our opportunity to put back into the moment what we’ve taken out of it. What if we were to put back into every moment an equal amount to that which we removed…or better yet…more.

A deliberate intention of leaving each moment better off than when we arrived. How do we do such things?

Instead of a ‘wake’ of moments we begin to awaken moments.

I pray that this year is a year where we each awaken more moments with one another.

Happy New Year!