Snow Under a Full Moon
  by William Edelen

A New Year's resolution: Be it hereby resolved that we will more fully appreciate the grace of the present moments as they come to us one by one, and take nothing for granted.

You are reading this under a full moon. Are you even aware of it? Have you taken the time to look up and absorb the beauty, the wonder and the miracle of it all?

A friend of mine in Idaho once described to me the most moving spiritual experience of his life. It was in January, about midnight. The snow covered earth sparkled under a dazzling full moon. My friend awakened his family and told them to look out of the windows and see the miracle of this beauty and this wonder. The entire family put on their ski clothes and promptly went out into the night. For over an hour they skied in what he called "a perfect, eternal silence."

The family would never again take the full moon and the snow for granted. He said they had experienced a living, spiritual miracle.

We have such a relatively short time to wonder as we wander this beautiful, glorious, planet. But today, we live in a world where the clock and the appointment calendar rule and command our days and our lives.

Human beings who are oriented and preoccupied almost continually with the past and the future seldom experience the human and spiritual possibilities inherent in the fullness of one's being and living in the present. Is there not something frantic about the way so many of us live? Does not your mind reel with the activities that have mastered you? "Quiet desperation," Thoreau called it.

The significance of our activities is to be found only in an awareness of the depth of eternity in which we are having our few brief seconds on this planet. We seldom think such thoughts. We just work on following the clock and appointment book, considering the past and thinking of the future. Five o'clock finally comes and another day is gone, never to return. We begin to arm ourselves against the empty hours...planning our appointments...for tomorrow.

To be renewed in this coming year will become a reality if we will only rediscover the grace of living with the wonder of the present moment and taking nothing for granted. "The sense of wonder is our sixth sense and it is our most natural sense," wrote D.H. Lawrence. Wonder is the capacity for sustained delight, marvel, amazement and joy. Wonder is a sense of freshness...anticipation...spontaneity and openness.

Rediscovering wonder is the secret to renewal. Without wonder we become buried in every dayness and treat all hours alike. Nights and days are drab...filled with stale hours and moments that are stillborn. What is left is the disintegration of being human. We need to cut through the facade of sophistication and prudence. These are spiritual diseases.

Life is in session...are you present? Our days and years are shortly going to be gone. What did we do with them?

Each moment of this new year is a new arrival. Will you resolve, with me, to more fully appreciate the grace of the present moments as they come to us one by one...and take nothing for granted.

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