Paying close attention to Life is like living with a snake in the room – and that is a good thing. More on that in a minute.
Let us try to imagine the scope of the accomplishments resulting from the lives of our fellow human beings, past and present and beyond.
This exercise came to me recently as a guest aboard the USCG Cutter Eagle – “America’s Tall Ship” – as it entered the port of New London, Connecticut, home of the United States Coast Guard Academy. The ninety-year-old ship is a complex and spectacular training vessel for Coast Guard officers. Having no responsibility other than staying out of the way of the officers and crew, I had plenty of time to observe, to marvel, and to imagine.
Starting with where I was standing, on the deck about two stories above the water line: the Eagle is 90 meters long, 12 meters across (beam), 5.3 meters below water when fully loaded, with 3 masts averaging 43.3 meters and over 2000 square meters of sail area, and I cannot guess how much rope! Turning to its human history, I tried to imagine all the people who, over nine decades under two once-warring governments, designed it – every rivet, plank, mast and pulley – constructed it, and have updated it to keep it seaworthy and secure; all the officers, crew, and trainees on board that day and who have ever sailed it – saluted, climbed, pulled rope, cooked, dined, slept, flirted, steered and kept watch on it. Then I tried to imagine the places Eagle has been and the conditions it has weathered around the world, in port and at sea, that calm, temperate day off New London being just one point on the very long lines of time and place.
I let my imagination go – and you can easily do this with me: first, imagine zooming out from a few hundred people on a ship to the spirits of the tens of thousands of people who have sailed it; then to encompass all the people in all the buildings – factories, schools, homes - and vehicles we could see from the deck of the ship moving upriver between two cities, people going about their lives; then on beyond those horizons to all of humanity around the world – that day, then going back for 90 years and beyond; then going into the future 90 years and beyond, people – our relatives - building ships, bridges, buildings, roads, vehicles and countless other things in teams, building families, building relationships, sharing joys and miracles, including each birth and all of Nature, and helping each other in times of loss, of natural and man-made disasters, including wars.
Is it possible not to experience a wonder, a holiness, a Holy Spirit at work in every moment of Life?
Now - back to the snake. “You can give your whole attention only when you care, which means that you really love to understand – then you give your whole heart and mind to find out. Such awareness is like living with a snake in the room; you watch its every movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightest sound it makes. Such a state of attention is total energy; in such awareness the totality of yourself is revealed in an instant.” Freedom from the Known, by Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), p. 32.
