2009 07 05

The Sunday Morning Church of ATTENTION

For me, remembering Independence Day is not a one-day experience. I wish to always remember the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

‘From a very special moment

            From a very special place.’

This Post Independence Day, a Sunday filled with Freedom feels like a bonus day.

A day of no expectations. An extra day like a leap year where magic can be accomplished or acknowledged. A day where creations can be buffed and shined or attention honed into more fully experiencing July.

This day carries some mystery.

How is it that all our holidays are only one day?

We have the ‘eve’ days, Christmas and New Years, where we prep or celebrate the ensuing miracle of a gift giving winter rebirth. The day when our year starts again and we stay up late into the night to greet the NEW.

Our Thanksgiving is but a day, as our days for Mother, Father, Valentines, and the ethnic celebrations.

I do not understand the Jewish Holidays, but they have a continuity of the ages and a continuity of days and incorporate sacrifice, special foods, hats, and a reverence-a profound awe-that raises my attention. Lifts my spirit into continuity to honor life longer than a one-day only sale at Macy’s.

My favorite sermons start in a new place, asking an old question and finding new ways to look at the question. Leading me onto a path of finer attention and greater sharing of a vision. But the true test is does this attention last long into the night and tomorrow?

Many years ago my favorite celebrator, Brother Vik, created holidays as soon as the last Holy Days past, and invited us out of our fixed attention-the land of InSAMEity/back to work-but holding a mirror to his mind as inviting us to know that even though the day is past, the sacred attention is still alive and available each day, week, month, years. He pinned these words in an on-going celebration of life.

 “Perhaps, you like I, having once embarked upon an adventure of self-exploration, now find yourself afloat on an enormous ocean of emotion clinging to nothing more than a tiny craft of self concern (importance) and can now understand that an expanding awareness floats upon the incredulous brainwaves toward the shores of a beautiful place, where there are many others who share the principal of higher self and wish to flourish in the ambition to live love and oneness.”

So we have come together once again to remember our independence. I will use this day and all dazes as viewpoints to honor ourselves and all of Precious Humanity in coming a long, long way to get there together, independence is not a one day affair.

Namaste

gary