Sufficient Unto the Day...

I have always had this sense that everything was going to be all right.

People accuse me of being too laid back, and I get that. I do not worry or panic about the things that normal people worry or panic about.

(as an aside - the things I DO worry about are weird as well. I worry about what the "best" thing to have for supper is. I worry about how to get 8 hours of sleep. I worry about which shirt to wear today. I worry about whether strangers think I am attractive... But when I get cancer, when there is a pandemic, when the money runs out... no worry at all)

I would love to be able to claim this is the result of faith - that I let go and let God - or put it at the feet of Jesus or some other trite and meaningless convention of faith. But it has nothing to do with faith in that sense.

I have been thinking in the midst of this pandemic and I guess the way my mind works is basically this:

I will probably be dead tomorrow. How do I have the best day ever today?

That is it in a nutshell.

So it totally explains my worries and lack of worry. I really do not care about tomorrow at any deep level. I really do not care about yesterday at any deep level. If it is happening today, then it means everything to me.

Now, as I said, this is not classical faith the way it has evolved through theology - but I wonder if it is closer to the way Jesus intended us to see the world. Is this in fact what "being religious" means?

As you can imagine, I am weathering the pandemic fairly well because I am focused almost completely on today. And today is absolutely no different from any other day in my life - except for some minor variations, and every day has minor variations, so it does not surprise me.

And because of that, I would like to make the case for ancient spiritual wisdom actually giving us the tools we need in times like this.

In my own tradition there is this whole speech Jesus gives where he says that birds of the air and flowers of the field do not worry about tomorrow - and yet they have magnificent lives. He follows this up by saying "sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof" (in the old fashioned way of our bibles) or perhaps if he was speaking to us now he might say - "there is enough to worry about right in front of you - for my sake - let it go."

And the other big spiritual gurus were pretty clear on the same thing... from Buddha who essentially said that concentrating on the here and now is the path to salvation through all the rest of them.

Live in the present. Give thanks for the present. Celebrate the goodness you see.

That is faith in action.

It is hard to do. But it is not impossible. And I guess that is where I hope we can get to. An ability to wake up and see the snow falling outside our windows, where we are locked away from the pandemic, and think - wow, pretty - and go make some toast.

The moment is all that there is. Make the most of it. That is what Jesus would have done.