Today is the day of all days, separating itself out from its long line of ancestors to embrace us. Tonight is the night of all nights, leaning down to wrap us in the comfort we need.

   "Can we just talk about right now?" a friend of mine asked her son. "No," he replied. "Right now is too raw."

   "What did he mean?" I asked her. 

   "Maybe there wasn't enough distance in "now" to protect him," she said.

   There's a lot of safety in imagining a distant future. There can be a fine comfort in coloring in the shape of some moments from our distant past.  

   Many of our life moments can feel too hard to face.

   The past sails safely in the wake of our days. The future floats ahead like music not yet heard. 

   "Now" sits right in front of us, a moment we can embrace or dodge. 

   We can experience so many of our days as gray and predictable. But, the day itself is no such thing. It holds as much gold or lead as we choose to mine from it. 

   Tonight can be just another night. But, the night knows nothing about our expectations. It waits open-armed.

   The embrace of life becomes hard for those whose only goal is safety. And safety is a fine objective amid the storm of pain caregivers see each day. 

   Some time, some day, some night, perhaps we can choose a complete embrace rather than a hesitant one. In some "now" we can choose to release ourselves from our parents warning voice.

   There's nothing harder than to embrace a difficult present. There nothing more difficult than to hold on to a sweet moment – to extend it so that we may savor it just a bit longer.

   "From the beginning, hasn't it been the same:" Stephen Dunn writes "the need to woo/ a stranger so you'll not be mutinous alone, to lie down knowingly among the nettles and the thorns?"

   We have "the need to woo" the present. But, "now" may, itself, be the stranger that steps back from any kind of qualified embrace.

   An oft-spoken line in the world of theology is that "Grace is free, but not cheap."

   The high price Grace requires is that we pay for her by facing every moment, not just the happy ones. Lacking this, we fall into the half-light of ordinary life. 

   Today offers itself to us. Tonight beckons. 

-Erie Chapman

photo – Crepe Myrtle Trunks & Boxwood 2011 Erie Chapman