The heavenly spirit travels faster than the human eye can see, and slower than the human eye can see.
- anonymous quote passed on to me by Claire Bateman
My friend, renowned poet Claire Bateman, sent me the above quote after I complained to her that nobody every remembers anything from sermons or speeches. "Maybe," she said, "but here's a line I've always remembered from a sermon I heard."
She shared the above quote and I can see why it stuck with her. The line calls us to a special kind of consciousness. We can't perceive the heavenly spirit with our human eyes, yet we can feel the presence of the heavenly spirit if we are open. What are ways we can become more fully present as the spirit travels through at speeds to fast and too slow to see?...
An article in a lovely website called Spirituality & Practice, referred to me by a reader in California, says that "being present in the spiritual life always has a double meaning. There's present, as in here, in attendance. And there's present, as in now, a moment of time. What is the spiritual practice of being present? Being here now."
Where are we if we aren't fully here now? The answer is that we are reflecting on the past or daydreaming (or nightmaring) about the future. Whenever we are doing these things, we are robbing the present of our presence.
The way for us to return to the present is to engage in the regular practices we routinely recommend in the Journal: attending to breathing, noticing what is before us with our senses, and also learning how to see with sacred eyes. The human eye records what is before it. The human spirit feels & perceives what cannot be seen with the eye.
The reason spiritual practice encourages attending to the arts is that art appreciation requires that we slow down. A painting cannot be appreciated with a superficial glance, a poem cannot be absorbed without reflection, a piece of music cannot be engaged unless we are truly open to its tones, rhythms and invisible communication with us.
Our days are flooded with velocity. If you live in a big or medium-sized city, you may believe you need to move fast to avoid being run down. Speed can seem life-saving. Yet speed can kill as well. Spiritually, velocity can kill life's finest moments. Some people, women in particular, joke about this in the context of sexual experience. They tease about men being in a hurry. For either party to rush through an intimate encounter is to dishonor the sacredness of that experience and to miss the spiritual signficance that rises from sharing Love's secret.
The world will always be calling on us to move to the next thing. Yet the next thing will present itself whatever we do. Practicing presence means accepting that our senses are inadequate for the appreciation of the spiritual. That is why the human cannot see that which moves too fast OR too slow for it. Only the spirit can see things the eye cannot. Only Love can open our spirits to the unique gift of her joy.
