My Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) has been going well. Along with attending many orientation sessions, we have focused quite a bit on active listening and being present to those we visit. Although it may appear obvious, in order to provide pastoral visitation to others, one needs to block all other distractions out of your mind and be present...really present. My current reading of Blaise Pascal's "Pensees" happened to bring up this very subject. Entry #47 of Pascal's book begins, "We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight." In his concluding paragraph of this section Pascal continues, "We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end."
Pascal's reflections provide well needed advice...at least for me. In the midst of learning how to be a pastoral presence to those in need, of being a seminarian with anxieties of homework and other obligations, and trying to be the best husband and father I can be: learning to live in the present is an important lesson to learn. I'm reminded of the words of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us today our daily bread." Today is enough for each of us...the hard part is convincing myself of this every day.
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