Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Enlightenment

You may remember this guy from the Tom Hanks movie, Big; he's all about granting wishes, offering all those things we long for on the worldly plane. I mean, just look at him! He's a symbol of wealth, health, power, romance and virility -- and check out the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil dudes at his fingertips. Plus he knows the future; what more could you want?

But my reading for today is this: "You poor are blessed, for the realm of heaven is already yours." What? Heaven isn't off in the future, some place where we have riches and romance and power?

I'm thinking that as long as we're caught up in chasing all of Zoltar's promises we're probably not really appreciating the gifts we have right here, right now. But it's more than that. Pema Chodron, in Comfortable with Uncertainty, tells us that the most promise we have is in the poverty we feel right now; that those places where we feel raw, or empty, or bruised are the openings where the riches pour in.

Our job, she says, is to breathe out the moments of joy that we feel, to send those blessings out into the world to comfort those who do not have what we have at this time. When we breathe in, and feel our poverty, or pain, hunger or loss, we share in the poverty, pain, hunger and loss of others. And somehow, in that space between the breathing out and the breathing in, there is that stillness, the peaceful quiet place of completion, where we know that all we have in that moment is exactly enough.

See how arrested Zoltar looks? I think he's caught in exactly that moment. And that flash/reflection over his head, the one that looks like a lightbulb? By george, I think he's got it!

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