Carpe Diem

By Ann Marie Eckert

After living alone for ten years, I now have a housemate. I wasn't sure if I would like sharing my house, but when a friend's marriage ended I offered her the spare bedroom in my house, telling her to take her time getting her feet back underneath her and figuring out what her next move was. Sometime this summer she will find her own place, but until then, we are enjoying each other's company.

Shortly after she arrived, I realized with some surprise that I enjoyed arriving home and finding someone there, which made me begin to wonder if this experience is trying to tell me something. Is God trying to tell me to do something different with my life? My space? My time? I got myself pretty worked up over these questions. When I mentioned all of this to my spiritual director, she stopped me in my tracks. "Don't look ahead," she said, "live in the present moment." She reminded me that if I spent all my time trying to figure out what something means, I will miss the experience of it. Her words of wisdom to me were, "Just enjoy the next six months, and when they are done, and your friend moves out, then, perhaps, you will know what it all means."

Tom Booth's song, Present Moment, caught my attention when I first heard it because it seemed to be written just for me and this experience I found myself in. It begins with . . .

Lord, help us to live in the present moment.
Help us to pray in the light of this day.

In the verses he prays that I may not "dwell on the failures of the past" or "dream of the glories of the future" but "May I just be with you and be who I'm meant to be."

The idea of "being who I'm meant to be" has been on my heart and mind a lot recently because of some time I spent recently with a few young adults who were trying to figure out who they were meant to be. These young adults were spending so much time trying to imagine themselves as some future self that it seemed like they were missing the experiences of here and now that are full of beauty and wisdom and insight. I remember doing the same type of thing when I was their age — assuming that the future me somehow existed outside of all the choices and experiences I was having in the present. I am drawn to Tom Booth's song because it reminds me to simply be who I am, which invites me to live in the present moment. God wants us to be our best selves, and if we do that each and ever day, we will become who we are meant to be in the future. But the only way to get to that future point is through the everyday choices and experiences of daily living.

Jesus encouraged his disciples to live in the moment.

Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your life-span? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? As for you, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not worry anymore. All the nations of the world seek for these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
- Luke 12: 25-26, 29-31, 34

Each moment is unique and special; each experience is full of meaning and importance. As Mr. Keating reminded his students in the movie Dead Poet's Society, we should "carpe diem," (seize the day). Only God knows the fullness of who we are capable of being. In this moment of my life, I've decided to focus on the present by asking God to help me to live faithfully in each day and to seize all that I can from it. I imagine that if I do this each day, I will most likely become the person God most wants me to be.

Let us pray using the words from the song "Present Moment":

Lord help us to love in the present moment, for we know not the time.
So we give our lives, placing our trust in you in the present moment.

Spirit Compass reflections are developed in partnership
with the Center for Ministry Development.