Minilogue - June 2006

Carpe Diem!

By the Rev. Bruce Johnson

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

Those lyrics from the musical, Rent, remind me of a time, many years ago, when I paid a visit to a church member at his law office. When I walked in, he was sitting behind his desk, frowning as he toyed with a pocket calculator. He looked up at me and asked, “How old are you, Bruce?” When I told him, he puzzled for a moment, punched in a few numbers and said, “according to the actuarial tables, you can expect to live, oh, let’s say, forty more years. That means you have….just a sec…twenty one million, twenty four thousand minutes left.” My immediate reaction (I hadn’t even said “hello” yet) was to think that was a very large number. But even so, I realized, it’s a finite figure, and it’s shrinking, even as I sit here!

Whatever prior agenda I had for this visit was laid aside, and we entered into a long and interesting conversation about finitude, life goals, and what it means to live in the moment with an awareness of mortality. When I left his office, there were approximately twenty one million, twenty three thousand, nine hundred and forty minutes left in my life -- actuarially speaking -- but I had a whole new attitude. “Carpe diem!” shouted my friend as I went out the door – “Seize the day!”

We all know that we are mortal, that our lives are bounded by eternity at both ends, so to speak. To know this intellectually, however, is not the same as realizing it existentially. Actually living each day, each moment, in full awareness of our eventual death, would be an intensely spiritual experience, perhaps too intense.

It is enough that we are occasionally awakened to this truth, so that we become aware of the preciousness of each passing moment. My awakening was fairly gentle compared to some, hardly what one would call a “near-death experience.” And yet this incident has become a kind of touchstone, a memory that I have returned to often, reminding myself to live in the present, and to receive each day as the sacred gift that it is.

Carpe diem, indeed! It is good to seize the day, to grasp the opportunities presented to us and to wring the full potential out of life. Before grasping and seizing and wrestling, however, comes the simple, gracious act of welcoming and accepting. Recipe diem, then; awaken to your life as a gift, and gratefully receive each moment so dear.