Today - a very special day 10/10/10

A new and very dear friend pointed out to me that today was 10/10/10, an oddity in our calendar that none of us will live to see again. Certainly such a numeric convergence makes today rare and special, but in a deeper, more profound sense, isn’t each day equally rare, beautiful, and filled with the stuff of gift, regardless of how the numbers come out?

Our Buddhist brothers and sisters teach us that the present moment is all there ever is, that yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes – or, by the time it does, it’s today, part of the unfolding now.

There’s nothing quite like a sudden accident or illness to shock us into the power of now. On Friday of this past week, I was up and down ladders at a job site, riding my bike to the grocery store, and taking my thrice-weekly, 3-mile run in the Bay View woods. But on Friday night, moments after lying on my back with Eloise, gazing at the stars and the planet Venus, I took a freak and inexplicable fall that snapped my fibula and shattered my ankle. As I sit writing this blog, my right leg is elevated in front of me, covered in a cast that runs from my thigh to my toes. It will be well into 2011 before I am able to walk, climb a ladder, or even take a shower again.

The now in which I reside is a much slower paced one than I inhabited just two short days ago. Getting dressed takes an almost Herculean effort, not to mention the skills of a contortionist. The only way I can get up or down stairs is on my butt, one step at a time ... one step at a time.

My all-too-Western mind has wanted to focus on what a huge bummer this new reality is going to be, on all the terrific things I’m going to have to miss because of this stupid fall, and how much time I’m going to waste, as the simple, everyday things that used to take seconds now take minutes or even hours. But what is the value of such evaluative and judgmental thinking? It neither hastens the healing process nor fosters an environment in which I may benefit from my new reality.

Buddhists believe that one of the central and most crucial spiritual practices is non-resistance, a mindfulness that trusts in the flow of life, an attitude that each and every now has within it exactly what we need for heightened consciousness. The call that I have received in the form of this fall is to accept rather than to resist, to look toward it expectantly rather than away from it at what might have been. Jesus put it this way: “Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”