It is beautiful, exciting, and surprising to live life open and receptive to the virginal newness of the present moment.

I love that description.

Every moment is pregnant with meaning, gift, and communication from our Creator. (The virginal newness of the present moment is pregnant…hmm)

But we miss it if we are not open and receptive to it, living in childlike expectancy of what it may bring and how we might be awed.

The same is true of people we encounter. There is so much they offer in the virginal newness of the present moment. We do our fellow person such a disservice, a dishonor, by meeting them in the present with our boring and extremely unfair relegations of the past. For no one is who they were even a month ago, let alone years ago.

Do you remember what we talked about concerning the brain memory stuff earlier in the year? (What a provocative question now that I think about it) Our brains are constantly updating information, experiences, memories, and making sense of them–formatting who we are and progressing in how we think. You ever read a book for a second time several years after the first reading? You read it quite differently don’t you? Because you are a different you. Your brain is different. Heck your epidermis is completely different than the one you had just 30 days ago!

Unfortunately we are conditioned in this culture to be quite judgmental and to label someone for life based on one thing they said or did, or for a lifestyle they were living at one period. We define people by how they treated us in 1996 or how they voted in 2004. How sad. How pathetic. Each person is who they are right now. And you won’t be able to see that unless you see them for who they are right now. In the virginal newness of the present moment. Listening. Open. Receptive.

Consider all the thought and interaction that goes into just one day of your life, or even one hour! It’s incredible. How would you like someone to define you by what you were like for one month back in ’07? You’re simply not that person anymore, are you? You think differently. You see differently.

May we see each person with openness and receptivity in the virginal newness of the present moment.