Just Now

The full moon is hanging clear in the dark sky of the early winter morning. It’s twenty-five degrees and predicted to get colder all day until the temperature is zero by tomorrow morning. Welcome to winter in New England.

Another winter morning twenty-five years ago I was in Maine on a dog sled expedition with Outward Bound. The temperature was ten below zero. The snow was shockingly loud as I trudged a short distance from the tent to pee in the still darkness of early morning. Every part of my body felt sick with cold, lack of sleep and fear. I was sure my feet would never be warm again. How would I find the strength to meet the rigors of the trip? I saw no way out of this fearful place. And we were still at base camp.

A brisk walk in my four-layered insulated mouse boots and a bowl of hot cereal with lots of brown sugar was enough to warm my body and revive my spirits. The rest of the trip was a journey of beauty into the white forests and frozen lakes of the north country. There were a few other challenging moments, but I most remember the enthusiasm of the dogs as the pulled the sled which held our food and camping gear. And laughing with each other as we struggled like turtles to right ourselves each time we fell on our cross-country skis. Who knew that having a large pack on your back would so radically alter the physics of the problem? And I remember one afternoon when the temperature rose up into the mid-twenties. The sun was bright and the wind was calm. At the crest of a hill overlooking the frozen white lake, we stripped down to one or two layers and basked in the warmth of the afternoon.

It’s all relative.

The essential question for the human mind is: ‘Compared to what?’ Tall refers to short. Warm is only meaningful when we know what cold is. Our language and our analysis of a situation is a product of comparison: how is this moment like and unlike other situations I have known?

But the essential question for the human heart is: ‘What is this?’ When we hold the direction of this question and don’t fall off into analysis and comparison, we can find our way into the aliveness of each moment. Along with our wondrous capacity for analysis, we are invited to find our home in the moment that has never happened before. The singularity of THIS is an unparalleled opportunity to find our place right where we are.