Take Nothing for Granted

“Mindfulness teaches us to be fully aware of each experience, letting nothing remain unnoticed, taking nothing for granted.”      ~ Holly Whitcomb

To take nothing for granted also means to fully experience the sorrow and the pain along with the joy. To sit with and to be with what is, and to allow the reality of this moment to teach me. For there is much to learn of life and love from the pain of sorrow as from the joy. 

And yet, it is so hard to sit with pain in any form. I have been so conditioned (perhaps you have, too) to ignore it or deny it or race through it, as if it will hurt less, as if to deny it makes it untrue. Our society can be a pleasure-seeking people; the “pursuit of happiness” is a right we are owed, is it not? Yet I know a life that denies sorrow is a life not fully lived. A life that ignores pain does not form the deepest connections with others, nor with God, on the journey. 

And so I am learning to live with awareness of sorrow and pain, with anger and fear, with hate and indifference. To sit with it, breathing deeply into it, asking what it has to teach me, knowing I am not alone for the Holy One is with me, and you are, too. 

Thank you for the many ways we journey together. I am blessed by your presence.

"After all, it can take a lifetime to really (know) ... what all these things are saying to us about life, about our own growth, about the spirit in the clay of us. But once mindfulness comes, life changes entirely."  ~ Joan Chittister