Our greatest opportunity for greater good happens in the present

​Live in the present. I hear this advice a lot these days. But what on earth does it even mean - to live in the present?

I think it starts with recognizing that left to my own flow in life, the places I live are in lands very distant to present.

Left on my own, I live in the past.

Or in the future.

And the fearful and regretful and shame and often guilt-filled emotions that take me there, those emotions are met with a piling on effect in those lands.

No one beats themselves up about their past and then once again re-visits the past and finds themselves feeling whole again there.

No one fears the future and then spends time racing through future scenarios and walks away feeling any less dizzy.

Whole again and free again are only found in the present.

We don't often find ourselves living in the present because visiting the present requires a trip plan. You actually have to plan to visit the present.

The momentum of life drags us into the past, or into the future; very few sit down and decide I will visit these lands today. We just land there.

Often, over and over again.

But the present, the present requires decision and commitment. It requires not packing bags but leaving them all behind. Present requires us to pour nothing out.

Present is all about receiving.

Receiving grace. Grace from ourselves.

Present is about recognition. Recognizing that the grace I long to receive has already been given to me by God.

Present is where we quiet the world long enough to hear God whisper: grace....

Russ Hudson says this is hard enough to do when conditions are favorable, but "when powerful emotions arise, it is generally much more difficult to find a ground in us that can be compassionately awake with what we are feeling."

Compassionately awake with what we are feeling....

We are often the most merciless when it comes to dealing with who we are. Very few people beat us up more than we beat up ourselves.

Because we go to special places where that is generally accepted. We go to the past. Or to the future.

It's in this moment, in this presence, where we can find quiet, in prayer and meditation. It's in this moment when we can hear the whisper of grace, from God and from ourselves.

It's in this moment that I am offered the chance to make myself into something that looks and feels like greater good.

You cannot do that in the past. Nor the future.

Only here. Now. In the present.