"When did you feel fully alive? Saturated with the moment, and apart from time?" A friend asked us to dig deeply. Women spoke of the power of giving birth, of waiting in uncertainty at a foreign border, and flying across the country between two strangers who turned out to be passengers worth knowing. 

 

No one spoke of money, or grandiosity. Being present seems to emerge unannounced, and undeserved. The vignette I shared was when the twins and John and I were part of the music team. Because of our numbers, the sound engineer snuggled us in tightly around the microphones, such that I had John one one side and two daughters on the other. I could hear them, feel them, sense them as we sang. A few of the hymns were songs John composed before they were born. Yet here we were, part of a choir on a gorgeous summer morning, singing because we love to. 

 

It doesn't get any better than that. 

 

What makes you feel fully alive? Can you remember? Can you pin it down in a frozen frame of awareness, crowded in on both sides by a litany of expectations? It could be this one. Or this one. Calming down and noticing life in its pulsing presentation of possibilities is not on lay away, reserved for retirement when the real business of life subsides.