Do you ever stop to think about where you spend your time? Is it in this moment, the only one you have right now or is it in some other world created in your mind where you live a dream and reality passes by?
Is our ability to fantasize a gift or a curse? If we spend our time dreaming when do we live? Or is life a dream?
I went to a talk by a noted theologian, a Psalms scholar, speaking about the Psalms. When his 3 day presentation was finished and he opened the floor to questions four or five different people asked him if there was a heaven. Four or five times he replied, "I don't know." And after each "I don't know," another person would ask again. His frustration mounting, he finally said, "I hope so, I believe so, but all I can do is live here and now and let heaven take care of itself." There was grumbling from the crowd as if the price of admission had been too high for this lowly response. Some people left shaking their heads as if they couldn't believe that this noted scholar could not answer a simple question.
Richard Rohr, a Catholic monk says, "The Christian churches today largely define faith as knowing, and even being certain about your knowing, when in fact it means exactly the opposite. Faith is being willing not to know, and still being content because God knows. Faith is a learned tolerance for ambiguity because I no longer use knowledge as power so I no longer need to be right."
Of course, faithful or faithless, we are all subject to the predilection to look for the greener grass. If we cannot predict what will happen then we will dream it for as Shakespeare once said, "nothing is but thinking makes it so." Perhaps, or perhaps this is the most foolish of ideas. For once we think this we have the illusion that we can control events and make our own dreams come true. And what of those not able to do so? Are they losers, faithless, lower class, not like us? If nothing is but...then the power is in the hands of those who can pretend that they know and can claim the "right".
The thought that every waking moment is a moment spent dreaming of somewhere else, someone else, something else is a monstrous creation. It lures us into a world not real, an intangible creation.
Look around, do you see what is in front of you? Do you smell the good earth, feel the rays of the sun, hear the laughter of children? Look around. Do you feel the coldness, breathe the dryness, hear the rustle of leaves? Look around. Do you feel the pain of the lonely, breathe the sadness of the sorrowful, hear the tears of the wounded? Look around. This is where you live, right here, right now. This is your reality. Do you believe that you do not know what is best, right, coming around the next corner? Do you believe that life is to be lived no matter what comes after? Do you believe? "Faith is being willing not to know...and not to pretend to know....
