Clinging to fragile things

Life is fragile.

This is both its tragedy and beauty at the same time.

Life seems like a hibiscus flower to me. Unfolding with astonishing beauty for only a day or two before it withers. It's delicate features so easy damaged by a harsh touch or damaging winds. And it happens so quickly that we can easily miss it - preoccupied as we so often are by unimportant things. But the fact that it is so quickly passing is also what makes it so precious. That it lives only briefly, is part of what makes it so beautiful to begin with. The cold and dismal landscape outside as I write this, makes me appreciate all the more the fleeting exquisiteness of June.

Months back I wrote about my obsession with pictures - with my foolhardy attempts to capture the past and keep it from...well, passing. Since then I've been trying to use photos instead as something to help me reorient myself to the present moment. Rather than yearn for what's passed when I look at them, I remind myself of what's still here in this moment.

That 5 year-old with the electric smile, whose picture is on my desktop reminding me of a happy time at San Diego's famed sunset cliffs. Now she's closer to 6, a lover of school, 3 inches taller, and a little more sassy. But her love, her joy, her laughter are still with me tonight. I can revel in them anytime I choose. Pictures have become something that point me towards revelling in the present moment.

It's so easy when we are confronted with the fragility of life to want to grasp hold, to cling to things so tightly because we fear losing them. That same 5-year old has a tendency to pick up flowers that have fallen and want to bring them home with her. Often in the process of clinging to her treasure she accidentally ruins them. Her attempt to protect and preserve by holding it tight in her hands, leads to crushed and wilted flowers. It's understandable - I cling to things in my own life - and in my attempts to preserve what is beautiful or precious I end up I clinging too tight just like her.

What strikes me now and again is my human tendency to want to cling to, and even worship the created things of this world instead of the Creator. I want to save the short-lived splendour of a flower, which is of course impossible. But that splendour points to something deeper, something eternal and omnipresent. I cannot keep the flower. I cannot preserve my precious and innocent 5 year-old. (Attempts to keep her a permanent 5 year-old would no doubt destroy her) But beauty and joy are experiences that point to the presence of the divine. And God, woven into the fabric of the universe, is not something I need to grasp or cling to, because God is always there. The same God that brings joy and delight through flowers or the blessing of a daughter, is always around me.

If God is love, than whenever I experience love, I also experience God.

There is no need then to grasp onto love from a particular person or in a particular experience, because love can be found wherever and whenever we have "eyes" for it.

Life is fragile and passing, but love is eternal. While the finite and temporal qualities of human existence are both tragic and beautiful, they are only passing reflections of the more eternal and omnipresent qualities of the divine. I want to cling less to God's reflection, and delight more in God herself. Maybe this is the "eternal" life Jesus offer us - that we can experience the eternal reality now if we connect with the presence of God in all the various forms it takes in our lives.

I've been looking for ways to preserve my photos to protect them from the passage of time and decay. And while this is a perfectly fine thing to do, what I realize is that attempts to preserve temporary things is no substitute for regularly bringing my heart and mind back to the eternal life I can encounter in the present moment.

May we all have eyes and ears and hearts that experience God's presence in the forms of love, joy, mercy, grace, beauty....and all the other ways we can experience him.