still

in college I took at least one class where I learned about Buddhism. and then in seminary, one of my favorite and most fulfilling classes was on Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Even after my short entre into Buddhism, I’m not prepared to say if it is a religion or a philosophy like some will debate. I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable teaching about it without a good resource to guide me.

But what I do know is that there are many parallels between what I learned and practiced in those experiences about the present moment and letting go of oneself that have kept coming back to me in the past weeks and months.

There is a Christian author Caussade (I believe) that I really want to read. He talks about living in the present moment and sees it as the only way to live fully into God’s providence. We cannot control the past and the future, we must trust that they are in God’s hands… but we can look to the ways in the ordinary and mundane that God is revealed to us.

As I sat down to type this, my cat hopped up onto my lap and curled into a ball and instantly began purring. Purring for cats is a way of expressing the need for or love of companionship. They will purr when scared or giving birth because those are moments that they need comfort, as much as they will purr when content. I think one of the points was that a cat who is alone will never purr out of happiness. It is an expression of the need for another.

How true is that of our lives as well. We need one another and we need God and even in the little ordinary things like a cat curled up in a lap, God’s will is revealed.