On Loving the Local Moment

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.” John Ruskin

When I was a young man, under the influence of my favorite writer (Ray Bradbury), I made it my goal to lead an observant life. I would watch carefully, I would go through life, thought I, with my wits about me, "my brights full on." 

I don't think I ever really accomplished that noble goal though. Looking back over my life, I would say in retrospect that I must have been sleepwalking. 

But this is no lament, no tale of personal woe. Life tends to gang up on a person, making mincemeat of all our lofty expectations. But here's where Father Stephen Freeman's 8th answer to his question, "How should we live?" comes in. 

Eighth, as much as possible, think small. You are not in charge of the world. Love what is local, at hand, personal, intimate, unique, and natural. It’s a preference that matters.

 Life is big. It's sprawling and disordered and difficult to summarize or understand "in a nutshell." Meanwhile the moment is here before us, always, but mostly quite mundane and familiar. We're bound to it, whether we like it or not. We may spend all our time wrapped up in fantasies that take us far from where we actually are (space trilogies and world politcs), but the here is always there, around us, moment by moment. And some say, if we only look, we might discover treasures.

That's what Bradbury was about. And the great Chinese poets, and Frost and Whitman, and so many others. They were all about the momentousness of the moment. They believed, I suppose, that before you could aspire to see the big picture, you had to pick a piece of ground to see from, and begin there, at the local, the near at hand, in the present moment. That's what I'll call the local moment.

If we do not value and respect the local moment, we will not value the far-flung. If we do not truly see the near-at-hand, but live instead in a mindscape of principles and theories, we will never be capable of truly being a neighbor. 

Jesus told a story about three men who, passing along a road, each come upon another man who had been assailed by thieves and left for dead in the ditch. The first two men see the wounded man in the ditch and immediately veer away to the other side of the road. They're thinking about what might happen should they stop and help the wounded man. Their minds are ranging beyond the moment and its obvious need to scenarios and speculations, and this actually prevents them from reacting to the crisis at hand. It is the third man, the Samaritan, who sees the need and responds with the necessary aid, no matter the consequences.

In the end Jesus asks his listeners, "Which of these men was truly a neighbor?" You might say the answer to that question is, the one who was living in the moment.