Process in the Present

Now training the necessary moves towards final stages; distances approaching what will be the course of the daily enterprise on Camino.  Thus 20k today July the 15th with the start about one month away and the departure to Spain about three weeks.  This continues with some let off as the start approaches in order to maintain fitness while giving the body and mind a chance to build up for the task at hand; to engage in another phase of the continuing process of life in the present; engage and live in the process.  As I was training the 20k today in heat that finished at 30 C the thought that came around was the importance of staying in the moment of the process or the present; neither looking back to what was nor being deluded into the illusion that there is a finish.  Each time we worry about the regrets of the past; or focus on the finish ahead thinking issues will be resolved we are deluded and miss the clarity of the present.  Stewardship of the precious present; gifted from God is after all the only reality that we in some sense control; ourselves and how we react in the present.  Training today then rather than focus on finishing 20k it was better to focus on the surroundings of the area where I walked; the sounds of a neighborhood waking for a new day at the end of the work week.  Early there is little outside the melody of the birds that changes as the sun rises higher in the sky.  Humanity then begins to come back to public life; fellow morning walkers appear; then vehicles; then sounds of lawn mowers.  All is interspersed with the sound and sight of squirrels running about. Internal sensitivity is also part of the present requiring awareness; the reactions of the body on this particular day to the new distances; to the differing heat and humidity; to the need to adjust the weight of the pack loaded for training within a pound of a full load on Camino.  With a sense of your own pacing and level of clarity the body tells you when to take on more water for the water lost through sweat.  The only reality over which we have some vision of control is the present.

I wonder then how living out the present faithfully to the principles we have come to call our personal ethic of conduct; not regretting or celebrating past nor dwelling on the glories or peril of the future that may come changes us.  Perhaps it changes how we participate in the continuous need for things like peace in society; equality and respect among people of all races and cultures.  There is no valid utopian vision of the future to be achieved; rather the need for each of us beginning with ourselves to stay in the process or processes that generate peace, equality; respect etc.  The teaching of Jesus does then not take us to a finish but rather becomes the tool of our stewardship of the precious present.

Just Bob