Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours picking cherries at the orchard near my home. I love tart cherries and try to stock my freezer with them each summer so we can enjoy them in the winter. Rarely in the past have I ventured out on a Saturday. During my working life Saturdays were spent preparing for Sunday worship services. Oh, sure, I might take an hour or so to hike or swim (or ski) with Gary or a friend, but for the most part I found it difficult to relax and actually pay attention to something that was not related to Sunday morning.
It was amazing, then, to wake up yesterday realizing I had the time to not only pick cherries, but also to use my little gadget to pit them while they were still firm, making that task a whole lot easier to accomplish. Cherries pretty much took up my entire day. There was something freeing about spending all that time focused on one simple intention of filling the freezer with a taste of summer's tart sweetness.
I have always enjoyed taking time to prepare good meals for my family from scratch, to keep a vegetable garden, and to make bread, yogurt or kombucha when I could. No matter what I was doing though, whether home and family-related or work-related, it often felt as if I was stealing the time away from something else. When I was still in college a missionary couple stayed on campus for their sabbatical and spent time teaching and talking about their experiences overseas. One piece of wisdom they imparted to me was, "don't let the urgent take place of the important." This bit of advice tends to pop into my mind when I stress about not doing some urgent-seeming something.
Too often, we let the urgent rule our days, and sadly there are times when we never get to the things that are important. Overall, I manage to maintain a pretty decent balance in the choices I make, but yesterday's cherry immersion showed me that there is more for me to learn in this regard. I felt the difference between doing something I loved with absolute freedom, versus doing it while another responsibility lingered in the back of my mind. Although I have practiced meditation for several years now, and even taught it, the mysteries of mindfulness continue to unfold, offering new insights at each turn. There was a different quality to my ability to focus yesterday which I long to experience more often.
A little book I read a long time ago, whose title and author I do not recall, told the story of a monk new to monastery life who was charged with making bread. He had started mixing, adding raisins to the dry ingredients, when a senior monk told him they were making plain bread that day so he needed to pick out the raisins. The new monk started to protest, saying it would take too much time. The senior monk calmly reminded him it didn't really matter what he did to occupy his hands, that what was important was what occupied his mind and heart. He could pray and meditate whether he was taking raisins out of flour or mixing the ingredients together.
No matter what I do today, or any day, I hope that I can embody this good advice, and be fully present in the process of whatever activities make up my day.
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