post 659) from Xanga

[artemisdart]

Our baby is completely "in the moment." If she's happy, you know she's happy; if she's upset, you know it so clearly. She can't lie, or dissemble, or be stoic, or "suck it up," or pretend. She doesn't worry about what other people think of her, or about what she thinks of herself.

She reminds me of a responsive reading that we use at my church, adapted from something written by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here it is:

"These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today.

There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more, in the leafless root there is no less.

Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike.

But we postpone or remember. We do not live in the present, but with reverted eye lament the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround us, stand on tiptoe to foresee the future.

We cannot be happy or strong until we too live with nature in the present, above time."