Sunday, June 22, 2025

Be Aware of the Present Moment

  Everything is changing.

When we suffer, we hold on to a still photo of that moment and we forget that we are in motion.
Nothing is permanent. Life is changing. I am changing. I am not the same as I was as a child, although I am the same person who had those experiences. I do not remember every detail of my childhood. Yet, I am still here. My awareness of self is still intact.
The Earth, the stars, everything is in motion and everything is changing form. Energy changes to matter and matter changes to energy.
Only this moment exists. And in this moment change is taking place. Our bodies are not the bodies of our youth. Every cell has changed with whatever our body had eaten and absorbed. Thus it is with every thing that exists. It is so obvious and so simple. Everything is changing. Time is our noticing changes. A flower blooms. The petals change and fall. The flower blooms again and again and again and it changes again, and again and again.
Everything is changing. When we suffer, we hold on to a moment, a still photo of that moment and we forget that we are in motion. “This too shall pass” goes unnoticed. Change is still taking place, whether we notice it or not. It is just that our awareness has been stilted as we focus on a past moment or a perceived future which we base on a no longer existing past moment.
Awck! Words can’t convey the way music, or swimming or being in the immediate present can. When I move my awareness to the immediate present and intend joy, I become aware of only the immediate present and I can not suffer then.

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Easter Mass When I Was Six

     My parents took my two-year-old brother and me downtown Albuquerque, to the Sears department store to buy new Easter clothes. My mother held my little brother’s hand so he wouldn’t grab things off the shelves. He tried several times but she always pulled him away.

        My mother pulled some black pants off a shelf and told my dad to watch my brother while she took me into the dressing room. I could hear my dad threaten to spank my little brother. He must’ve tried to run away from my dad. The pants were too long. My mother pulled the cuffs inside and then she put her hand in my waist. “I can sew these pants to make them fit you for now and then I can let them out as you grow.” She never bought me new clothes that fit. They were always too big.

When we got home, she sewed my new “dress up” pants and a “dress up” shirt to wear to church on Easter Sunday, and every Sunday after that. It was not only traditional, but it was also expected. People acted as if Jesus would be upset, coming out of the tomb, and seeing children dressed in anything other than brand new Easter clothes. I didn't like receiving new “too big”  dress up Easter clothes because I knew that meant I wouldn’t be getting any toys until Xmas. And that felt like forever.

Easter Mass was always a high Mass. I didn’t like going to a high Mass because we would be in church for a long, long, long time. The adults would be doing a lot of kneeling and standing, and I couldn’t remember when we were supposed to kneel or stand. I was too little to see anything. The people were too big. I could only see their butts, their shoes, and their backs. I could hear the priest talking in Latin and the choir singing in Latin, too. But I only spoke Espanol, not Latin. High Mass was long and boring, especially when we had to kneel. We knelt for so long my knees hurt and my mom wouldn’t let me stand up.

My dad told me the priest gave the same long sermon with the same boring story he told us last year, and the year before that. How come superman didn't fly to the tomb and roll the stone open? How come Wonder Woman or Super Girl didn't chase the Roman soldiers away? That would have been a better story that would've kept my attention. I was only 6 years old 70 years ago.

What if Moby Dick swam into a cave under the tomb and helped Jesus escape? That would've been a terrific story that I would’ve loved. Can you imagine listening to a priest read from the Bible about how Moby Dick swam into a tunnel in the ocean and smashed through the floor under the tomb? Wouldn’t it be cool if he swallowed Jesus alive and helped him escape to an island? And when Mary Magdalen came to find him he was gone. I saw the Moby Dick movie at the drive-in theater with my parents when I was 6 years old. That was an exciting movie.

Resurrection is not miraculous to little kids. We watched cartoon people and animals get killed and then resurrect every Saturday morning. Listening to a priest go on and on and on telling the same boring story every Easter about Jesus coming back to life is not interesting.

I was only 6 years old and bored. I still think if Moby Dick busted Jesus out of the tomb it would have been a far more interesting Easter story.