A couple months ago as I was running through a park near my home, I passed a woman with her disabled daughter on the trail. We greeted each other with a smile and a hello, and then she added, gesturing to her daughter, “Mary says good morning too.”
I smiled and kept running but thought of the woman’s eyes as they had met mine. It seemed to me she was asking for help. Flexing my meditation muscles, I watched this thought go by in my own mind and decided it was worth paying attention to. Turning around, I jogged back and said, “I didn’t get to say good morning to Mary.” My reward was waiting for me in the delight and surprise in this mother’s face. Someone had noticed and cared about her daughter. I looked at Mary and smiled and said good morning. She wasn’t able to engage but that was okay. The happiness in her mother’s eyes felt like someone had taken the calm of the deep blue sky and put it into my heart. Twenty years after my “Silent Sermon on the Mount,” I had learned to feel The Wonder of the Moment.
