Golden Moment

I was talking to a friend of mine from college a few weeks ago as his wife was taking pictures of our girls playing together. He told me that once their camera was missing for a few weeks and he described this as a tragedy of unparalleled proportion for his wife. "We didn't have a camera for three whole weeks. It was just horrible." he said, dryly, a smile in the corners of his mouth.


I laughed. Of course, we mothers have to have ten trillion pictures of everything our child does! Missing a whole three weeks of essential life-living that your child does -- well, it'd be like it never happened! :)


The other day was one of those days. It was the most perfect and happiest fall morning one could ever wish for -- cool, crisp air, yellow leaves on green grass, golden sun on bright hair, happy smiles on chubby faces . . . and no camera.


At first, it was like a tragedy! I couldn't record this moment, frozen in time, for posterity! I wouldn't be able to look back at the pictures and see again the gloriousness of this day. That's why we mothers take pictures so many times a day -- because the moments are so fleeting and so enormously precious and we have to save them or how could be bear to let them pass.
So, yes. It was tragic. I wanted to capture and hold this moment and I didn't have the camera.

But then I just sat on the grass in front of my girls. I flung yellow leaves on their upturned faces and shining hair, heard peals of laughter, saw little arms clasped around a baby body, two pairs of bright brown eyes and long lashes blinking and shining in delight. As I felt myself the cool brushing touch of leaves, there was at the same time the warm tightening of happiness in my heart.

Why was I thinking that I wouldn't remember this moment on my own, these sights and sounds? Why couldn't I impress upon my memory the lovely joy that I was experiencing? If I had a camera to record these things, wouldn't I be shortchanging my ability to truly know and enjoy this morning? I would be hindered in living in the moment as fully, as richly. I wouldn't be looking with eyes, tasting with senses that strived and needed to remember, to know. The one whose eyes are "directed toward the depth of things" (see my sidebar) to see, to rejoice in, with an intense, knowing gaze, does not look through the lens of a camera, living the moment for the future, focusing his senses on analyzing shots, trying to freeze "life happening" in an artificial moment.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Surprised By Joy, "The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction."
Thus, I cannot be completely experiencing joy while remarking to myself "Look at this good morning. I am happy right now." And so the moment I think about how I will write about this later or look at the pictures of this later, I am no longer living the moment, rather I have begun "examining my satisfaction" and looking into the future.

And it was also C. S. Lewis that said:

"The Present is the point at which Time touches Eternity. . . . [God] would therefore have [human beings] continually concerned either with Eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present -- either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself; or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure. . . . . . [It is in the Present] and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge and all pleasure dwell."

~ The Screwtape Letters