Living in the Present Moment: Abandonment to Divine Providence #4

This past weekend I had the pleasure of many deep and nourishing conversations. One of these chats over a meal of Chinese seafood centered on the topic at hand: the value of living in the present moment. One of the friends expressed concern that the current popularity of the notion of living in the now misses the essential quality of being in a conscious relationship with the Divine. He suggested that the difference between meditation in the style of Zen, for instance, does not pay attention to the Other, and thus is not really prayer.

There may be some truth to this, though I welcome any Zen practitioners to weigh in. While it is my understanding and experience that such meditative practices do not pay attention to the Divine other, I must admit, there are many types of theistic prayer that seem to forget that their is a Personal reality on the other end of the line, so to speak... that God is always more than we imagine.

It is also my experience that when open and attentive to the moment, a profound sense of Presence becomes manifest. This happened this weekend as I was driving. I began by listening to the radio, but losing stations in the mountains, I shut the radio off and continued in silence. As I paid attention to the moment-- the rain falling, the road unfolding before me, the sound of the wind, the colors of the trees-- I found a stillness open up inside me that was anything but empty. It felt indeed like a presence had become manifest, like the presence of an old friend. And the effect of this presence was a spontaneous feeling of gratitude, peacefulness, and desire to express this, which I did outloud in the form of prayer.

So, perhaps living fully attentive to the moment is in some ways and for some people a dimension of prayer, and opening up to the transcendence that is in, through, and beyond all things. This reminds me of a poem by Denise Levertov.

Everything That Acts Is Actual

From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me

into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over
          new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?

The flawed moon
acts on the truth, and makes
an autumn of tentative
silences.
You lived, but somewhere else,
your presence touched others, ring upon ring,
and changed. Did you think
I would not change?

          The black moon
turns away, its work done. A tenderness,
unspoken autumn.
We are faithful
only to the imagination. What the
imagination
          seizes
as beauty must be truth. What holds you
to what you see of me is
that grasp alone.

Denise Levertov