Note: The following meditation was written by Jason Dinger. Jason is a Vice President with Saint Thomas Health Services, Nashville, Tennessee. – Erie

   In this day and age it’s hard not to lead a busy life.

  Blackberry’s are no longer something you pick on a weekend
excursion, but rather a tether to global movements and the growing demands of
work. Our drives home are filled with
traffic, smog, and people multitasking between their cell phones, radios,
navigation systems, and DVD players. Our
day crescendos with take out, hungry dogs, and hundreds of cable channels
streamed directly to our consciousness. The listless sounds of newspaper pages
have been changed to the clamor of keys and the morning drip of coffee has been
overtaken by the chatter of a line at Starbucks.
   But we still have chocolate cookies…

    I have to admit that eating was a utilitarian event for me
prior to my 2 year old son, Luke, entering into the world. What was once an “in and out” activity has
now been replaced with extended hand washing (and drying), coloring, matchbox
car driving, and balloon picking extravaganzas, only to culminate with the “special
treat.”
    When it’s time for the special treat – everything stops.
And, like everything else in a 2 year-olds’ family life, there is a ritual to
the event: 

1. The world stops,
2. Things become quiet,
3. We bend down to the ground where Luke,
4. Whispers in our ear,
5. “Can I have a special treat?”

 “What would you like?” we ask, 

6. He replies in a whisper…”a chocolate cookie.”

    This is always my favorite part of the day.
    Everything goes away and it is just me, and my son, together
in all ways of being.
    We sit together and are grounded by the massive qualities of
the earth – gravity holding us together and keeping us from flying apart from
one another at a million miles an hour.
    And then it becomes quiet and the ambient noises of birds in
the wind appear – reminding us of life outside our growing egos and importance.
    And, only as a 2 year old can teach, we each take a singular
cookie and take a nibble…then another nibble…enjoying its play on our taste
buds.
Who needs more than one cookie when you can realize the
experience you’ve been given? Quiet contentment, I’ve come to believe, is the
truest form of happiness.
    So may the wind blow in your face as it whispers quietly in
your ear…
    Would you like a chocolate cookie?