Psalm 103:14-16

¹⁴For he knows our frame;     

he remembers that we are dust.  

¹⁵As for man, his days are like grass;    

he flourishes like a flower of the field;  

¹⁶for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,    

and its place knows it no more.  

The following was written after waking from a dream which ended with me saying the words:

"This moment here, this moment, right now.

How precious it is."

How I might desperately wish at some future time to have this moment back. No matter how much I might want to live in this moment again, I never will.

But if I could go back there are so many moments that I would return to, if only for a dozen ticks of the clock, even if I was just a silent observer, even if the scene I returned to was 'stop action'. Just to be a witness of so many things that were commonplace then but gone forever now.

- To my childhood, to see my parents when they were younger than I am now,

- To see my brothers, the things we did together that are faded memories to me now

- My elementary school, the nuns that taught at St. Gregory,

- To see Grandma and Grandpa Purpera, my mom's parents. To see Grandma Canal and Aunt Connie, my dad's widowed mom and his sister...

The list goes on. In fact every hour of those times past are precious beyond words, and gone beyond my reach. As are all the moments of my past. Beyond my reach -- to laugh with my son, Josh one more time, and I know I could make him laugh, because he laughed so easily. To sit quietly together and do nothing but just be together.

Gone beyond my reach.

How do we live with this? The longer I live the more I lose to the past. Given enough time, everything that I hold dear will be gone -- cease to exist. 

Beyond my reach.

I can only live like this:

This moment here, this moment right now -- I treasure it -- I revel in it -- I live it fully, value it fully, am fully present to it.

I savor it's blessings, move through it's doors, study it's rooms, I silence the noise in my heart to fully hear the sounds that are of this moment and never again, I breathe in the aromas that will catch me suddenly back when this day has washed down stream.

I am in it like a returning version of my future self -- as much as I can be.

And I fill it. I fill it with as much as I possibly can so that some future version of myself -- given the miraculous choice to return to a day, a time in the past,

would choose: this day…this time…this hour...

And then...

Without regret, I let it slip into the past.

And if I am intentionally living each scene of my life fully, I cherish the future as much as the past, I move on to the next moment and wring every possibility out of it and make it a shining moment or day or month or year or lifetime.

I think there's probably not going to be the possibility to return and interact with the past, but I fully expect one of the benefits of heaven will be to know it all. And from there I will probably savor this moment or regret this moment more than I ever could here.