Stop for a second and think about this: when did you give and receive the most love today?
Or, if you're reading this first thing in the morning, when did you give and receive the most love yesterday?
Take a few moments to really think about when you felt most alive, most full of joy, most yourself?
What was that moment like? Did it feel like time stopped or slowed down? Was it simple? Was it sweet? Was it bittersweet? Who was there? Was it something you said/did or something they said/did?
Once the moment passed, how did you feel in its aftermath - joyful? tired? sad?
Did you even notice how wonderful that moment was as it unfolded or is it only now that you're looking at it in the rearview mirror that you see it for what it was?
And just how tempted are/were you to try to hold on to that moment? To create it again, this time to capture it like magic in a bottle so that you'd never have to get it go?
"When something is that good, the temptation," Kate and/or Jessica write, "is to keep it, hold it, bottle it, preserve it, and, if we're the entrepreneurial type, maybe even sell it. But often, those precious moments are fleeting. They are precious exactly because they are few and far between" (p 179).
I'm not entirely sure I agree with that -- that precious moments are actually that few and far between. Frankly, I think they happen all the time but we're not often paying attention or actively looking for them.
But I agree with the point that when these beautiful little moments happen -- even if it is in the wake of something terrible -- "we want to instrumentalize (remember that word from this post?) the moment. We want to stay there. When something is good, we want to build a fortress - move in and live there forever" (p 180), much like Peter wanted to build the three houses up on the mountain in the wake of Jesus' Transfiguration. (Here's that story in Eugene Peterson's "The Message" version of the Bible because I love it!)
Can we make this moment last longer? (p 181)
Nope.
But we can "learn to see the signs, to feel the moments swell around us. We begin to see those brief periods as delicate, precious .... We can become more beautiful, more transcendent, as we learn to carry them with us, changed by the things we might never see again" (p 181).
Blessed are we who recognize that spark, that glimmer of transcendence that feels ... otherworldly. Like points of light that converge to reveal a reality we can scarcely believe, yet somehow we remember in the depths of our souls. The sunrise that no picture can capture. The moment of clarity we can't exactly describe. It is a magic suffused with delight and goodness and beauty and joy. And we know it was You, oh God" (p 182)
Pastor Allison
I'm curious:
Have you read the "A Good Enough Step" on page 183? It talks about making an Ebenezer. (Remember this line from the beloved hymn -- "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thine help I come"?)
Why don't you try it? The next time you're outside, find a rock. Think the last time you felt the transcendence of God - write a word on the rock to remind you of that experience or attach a note to the rock, then put it somewhere you'll see it.
"No, we can't bottle these moments, but we can be changed by them" (p 183).
BONUS: Sometimes these moments of transcendence are intermingled with immanence. Sometimes you can only see something beautiful after something terrible. And sometimes it's the other way around. If you feel particularly drawn to this chapter, you may want to check out this additional reflection.
