Today, our life philosophy comes from SarahBeth Speciale who focused her life philosophy on Christianity, which she boils down to two principles: “Jesus loves me this I know,” and “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” Obviously, both of these come from hymns that are sung in almost every Protestant church. No matter what her doubts about Christianity, SarahBeth has always been able to cling to the beliefs that the most important message of the Bible is love of God, of neighbor, of self, of the earth and its inhabitants. One of the things that attracted her to First Pres was our mission statement, Choose Love. Be the light. Change the world.

However, even though SarahBeth grew up in the church, she has also gone through periods where she felt disillusioned with the Christian faith. In her 20s, SarahBeth went through a phase of religious exploration. She found herself drawn to Buddhist teachings. The two teachings that really resonated with her (and still do) are the principles of mindfulness and living in the present moment.

When you first start studying Buddhism, you begin with the practice of meditation. One of the most common introductory practices to meditation in Buddhism is focusing on your breath. You are to simply observe the breath going in and out of your nose and to feel the air pass over the tip of your upper lip. If you’ve ever done meditation, what you have probably noticed is that your mind very easily wanders to different thoughts or memories. In fact, what you will discover is that keeping your mind focused on the present is excruciatingly difficult.

SarahBeth’s favorite Buddhist teacher is Thich Nhat Hahn. One of his sayings that has become her mantra during meditations or long walks is “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment.” There are two goals of this mantra. The first is gratitude. It can be so easy to lose sight of how much we have to be thankful for in our lives. When we find ourselves facing difficulties, those challenges can very quickly encompass our entire worldview. We lose perspective and continually dwell on the negative.

This mantra attempts to push away those challenges so that you can see the world with fresh eyes. When you let go of the worries and anxiety that follow you, then life feels more manageable. The idea is that you only have control over what you are doing in the present. The past is gone and cannot be changed, which leads to the second lesson that Thich Nhat Hahn is trying to teach with his mantra: it is very easy to get stuck in the past with guilt, regrets, and what if’s or to wish away the present with hopes for good or better things to come.

This Buddhist philosophy is very similar to Jesus’ teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” By embracing the present moment, you release worries about the future and regrets about the past. Why is this so important?

Well, perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of being human is that our minds are always working on multiple problems at once. You can be working on a task, while at the same time, thinking about other things. When I was a teenager, I made all of my money mowing lawns. One of the reasons why I liked mowing lawns so much is that I could think about other things while I was doing it.

Sometimes I would think about books I was reading or movies I had seen and try to parse out their meaning. Other times I would think about ideas that had been rattling around in my head. But most of the time, I would think about my relationships. I would playback conversations I had with various people or imagine conversations that I needed to have with other people. What I realize now is that imbedded in many of those thoughts were regrets about the past and anxiety about the future.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a very comfortable place for me—glancing backwards or looking forward. What is not so comfortable is being in the present moment. That’s a really hard space for me to occupy. And I know I’m not alone in that regard. I know being in the present is challenging for many people. The question is why? Why is it so difficult for us to be present?

The problem with being present is that it requires you to feel. When you are in the moment, you become highly attuned to your emotional and physical state. Physically, you feel everything that is happening in your body from aches and pains to digestion to your rate of breathing to your heart beat. Emotionally, you realize how much your emotional state can fluctuate from moment to moment. You can feel calm one moment and tense the next. You’ll feel a wave of anxiety wash over you followed by a sense of relief.

All this to say, when you are really present, you will quickly come to realize how all over the place you can be. Another aspect of being present is that you are far more aware of your surroundings. You notice things about your environment that are normally overlooked. When I’m walking in nature and I am present, I see all kinds of things that I would normally miss. When I’m trapped in my mind, I only look at the ground in front of me. But when I’m present, I’ll notice bird’s nests, flowers, insects, and animals. Even the scent of the air becomes more palpable.

You also become more in-touch with the people around you. When I began mindfulness practices, I was amazed by how much more attuned I was to people’s facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. Even if they weren’t saying the words, I could tell when someone was experiencing distress. I was blown away by how much a person could speak to me just through their eyes. It’s true what they say—the eyes are the window to the soul. A person might be smiling while telling me a story, but their eyes would reveal a completely different story—one that wasn’t quite so happy.

In many ways, the world is much more vibrant place when we are paying attention. Indeed, I believe that when you practice mindfulness, you become much more attuned to God’s presence in your life. This is where I want to return back to the mantra that SarahBeth borrowed from Thich Nhat Hahn, “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.” Notice that the focus of this meditative practice revolves around breath and this is for a good reason because, whether you realize it or not, breath is central to our connection with God.

This morning we read from Genesis chapter 2. This is the familiar story of God forming man from the dust of the earth. Literally, in the Hebrew, Adam is a clay man. However, when God forms Adam, he is technically not alive at that point. In order to give life to Adam, God must breathe life into him. God’s breath in Hebrew is the word neshamah, which can also be translated as spirit. God’s spirit or breath is not only the animating force that gives us life, but also the source of our connection with God. In a sense, the neshamah of God is our spiritual essence.

Interestingly, we find similar a scene in the New Testament when Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Similar to God breathing life into Adam, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit onto the disciples. The parallel is obvious—the Holy Spirit is the same breath from Genesis chapter 2. In my opinion, the reason this story bridges across the Old and New Testaments is because part of our duty as Christians is to get in touch with this aspect of God that is the animating force inside of us.

The more we are in touch with God’s breath, the more we are in touch with God. If you want to be in touch with God’s spirit inside of you, then you have to practice mindfulness and live in the present moment. This is where the scriptures intersect with SarahBeth’s story of how she sees mindfulness from Buddhism as being important to her faith.

Christianity has a long history of people who embraced Christian mysticism. They were known as the desert fathers and mothers. These are people who spent years and sometimes even decades praying and meditating out in the desert. They developed contemplative practices that are very similar to what is found in Buddhist traditions. We know what they did because many of them wrote down these practices to share with others.

Within these writings, there is always a consistent thread: if you want to experience God, then you need to start by spending time alone in contemplation. A famous desert father, Abba Moses, once said, “Sit in thy cell and thy cell will teach thee all.” Of course, Abba Moses is talking about sitting in a monastic cell. Why does sitting alone in silence teach you about yourself? Well, it goes back to what I was describing before about becoming highly attuned to your mental, emotional and physical state. You can’t do that if you’re always around people.

Interestingly, this is actually one of the hardest things for people to do and to explain why, I want to tell you a story of something amazing that happened when I was running my youth group back in Princeton. Every year, during the winter, I would take our high school youth on a retreat. There were always three sessions: Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday night. Saturday night is always where I would do something unique to bring them closer together with God and each other.

Well, one year I decided that rather than teach or do something creative, I wanted them to spend 15 minutes in total and complete silence. It doesn’t sound that long, but trust me, for them it was an eternity. And you would be amazed at what happened. A number of them actually started crying because for the first time, they couldn’t block out the world with other distractions. Afterwards, when we talked about what happened the comments were very revealing.

One person said, “Being that silent and still, I’ve never felt so alone in my life.” Another person said, “I realize how much I fill my life with noise to distract myself from the negative thoughts that are floating around in my mind.” But the one that really stuck with me is a girl who said, “Being that silent forced me to feel my emotions in a way that I’ve never experienced before.”

Our discomfort with silence is why people are so reluctant to be by themselves. When you’re alone without distraction, then you can really start to feel everything, which frankly can be a scary experience. But it’s important to spend time alone in silence because it opens you to an entirely new experience of yourself. A famous quote from one of the desert fathers of that era says, “Take care to be silent. Empty your mind. Attend to your meditation in the fear of God, whether you are resting or at work.”

When you empty your mind, you’re not thinking about the past and you’re not thinking about the future. The only thing you are focused on is the present and it is through this experience that you can begin to have a deeper experience of God’s breath or spirit within you. And here is where we come to the point of this sermon: When you experience God’s neshamah, God’s spirit, God’s breath, that is how you experience God’s love and this is so very important to actually living a Christian life.

When you feel loved, then you automatically feel more connected to the world and the people around us. When you feel more connected to the people in your life, then you can be more present to the needs of others, which allows us to better live out Matthew 25 of serving the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, care for the sick and visiting those who are in prison. This is why SarahBeth’s philosophy of focusing on mindfulness is so critically important. Without it, we are never going to be able to fully appreciate how Jesus is attempting to shape our lives and to become the servants who God wants us to be.

I want to end this morning with a quote from Thomas Merton. Merton was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion. Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, but his most famous book is his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain published in 1948. His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore the offerings of monasteries across the US.

SarahBeth is a big fan of Thomas Merton, as am I, because he so embodies the Christian philosophy of connecting with God through mindfulness. SarahBeth included this quote in her note and I think this quote really summarizes everything we’re discussing today. The quote says, “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it as all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.” Amen.