Everyday Sacred Moments

and 7 Ways To Invoke Them

It’s not a new idea. Poets, philosophers, and theologians have explored this concept for centuries. It’s one of the reasons people adopt practices like prayer, meditation, reading, and journaling that open lines of communication and insight beyond our habitual thoughts and routines. The moments we regard as special in some way—even as sacred—reveal something about our approach to living, which will evolve across the arc of our lifetime, based on our experiences and how we interpret them.

I’m not talking about the Saul on the road to Damascus epiphanies that upend lives in an instant but the little things that, either individually or collectively, affect us deeply when we are open to them: the lovely flower that somehow blooms from the crack in the sidewalk, the story with the oh-so-satisfying ending, the vibration you feel as your vocal ensemble strikes a climactic chord with flawless intonation, the unexpectedly humorous incident that has you laughing until tears roll down your cheeks. These are the things that add a bit of sparkle to our lives and lift our spirits, keeping us going on otherwise ordinary or even depressing days. I consider them gifts… sacred moments.

Sadly, when it feels as if the whole world is on fire with too many crises queued up to even process, these little joys can trigger guilt: How can I allow myself even a moment of happiness when others are subjected to such misery or when my recently departed loved one can never again enjoy these precious earthly moments with me? We have to remind ourselves that our loved ones would want us to be happy and that sentencing ourselves to a life of misery not only does nothing to improve the lives of others, it may even render us less able to be useful in that regard.

Still, there’s a balance to strike because there really is important work to be done, and no one can do everything. Surely most of us have felt torn between the people, relationships, and experiences we would like to expand, share, and fully immerse ourselves in—including the work we feel most called to—and our sense of responsibility around other things which desperately need attention, support, and care that may feel beyond our capacity at times.

When we focus on time management (including fretting about and avoiding some of the tasks on our lists) to the exclusion of acting on creative impulses to explore new ideas and noticing and internalizing things which are especially meaningful to us, we are in what I sometimes refer to as hare mode. We’re not usually considering the big picture or even the fullness of whatever we are engaged in at the moment. We are mostly just trying to check things off the list.

When we change gears and make the shift to tortoise mode, present moment awareness opens our eyes to more of those magical micro-moments of awe, joy, peace, compassion, love, inspiration, possibility, and any of a zillion other things I believe we are here to experience and to learn from while we can.

At the same time, tortoise mode can heighten our awareness of other matters which need our collective attention—things we might have sped past or ignored back in our hare days.

These moments of awareness accumulate quickly when we prioritize them. Over time, they create a subtle yet powerful guiding force in our lives. But if we habitually blow past them in an effort to move on, numb our discomfort, or insulate ourselves from present or future pain, we not only miss opportunities, we miss out on crucial pieces of our lives—the good with the bad.

Admittedly, there are times when we have no promising options before us. In acute tragedy, our choices are limited, as adrenaline kicks in and we necessarily switch into survival mode to do what we must while all other priorities move to the background. But we cannot live on adrenaline indefinitely. Once the (literal or figurative) tsunami has receded, we begin the longer and slower process of somehow establishing a new normal that allows us to, among other things, savor the nourishment of sacred moments once again.

While such transitions may be a bit easier for those who were already tortoising before the crisis hit, it’s never too late to begin to tortoise—to dial up our present moment awareness in a way that encourages us to fully experience all the various aspects of whatever we are doing.

In challenging times like these, how do we experience more of the sustaining Everyday Sacred, in practical terms? The answer, of course, depends on the individual and what they are going through, but I can offer a few general ideas to get us started…

1. Gently reassess and adjust your standards, as appropriate—the ones you have for yourself and the ones for others, bearing in mind that perfectionism is not a worthy goal and should not be conflated with healthy striving.

2. Schedule at least 2-3 brief pauses into each day for self-check-ins. Ask yourself 3 questions: What do you notice? (tension in the air, first blue sky in a week, that thing I dreaded wasn’t as hard as I expected…) How do you feel? (energized, leary, relieved, irritable, exhausted…) What do you need? (a deep breath, water, better light, more sleep, my reading glasses, a change of pace). These check-ins can be done in as little as 60 seconds.

3. Replace toxic positivity (which is forced, performative, unnecessarily limiting, inauthentic, and one-dimensional) with an openness to allowing, encouraging, releasing, and tapping into the fullness of your intuition.

4. Experiment with changing one thing at a time and noticing what happens before reacting (especially important when you are overwhelmed) or making further changes.

5. Set the stage. A little extra attention to the preparation aspect of any new endeavor can go a long way toward easing anxiety, helping things go more smoothly, creating the space for new possibilities, and giving others a chance to warm up to any changes you decide to make, so you encounter less resistance.

6. Accept the inevitability of cognitive dissonance as part of our reality, and watch for silver linings.

7. With #6 in mind, try tortoising your way toward a more nuanced and less polarized perspective on life than our society encourages (or even insists upon) lately.

This last point is one I intend to expand on next week because it strikes me as the root of so many problems that are getting worse instead of better in recent years. #2 is probably my favorite recommendation in the list because we miss so much by burying ourselves in our screens, our work, and especially in our outrage, no matter how justified. Any of these suggestions could be expanded into an article or even a book, for that matter. But in most cases, I’m not sure we need to think or write more about them so much as we need to start implementing them. It’s easier to move the steering wheel once you are actually driving.

Observant readers will note that this list could just as easily be characterized as 7 Ways to Get Unstuck because, in most cases, there are already loads of sacred moments out there for us to savor and be inspired by if only we can pull our heads out of our behinds long enough to find and embrace them.

As with anything you read here, take what works for you and leave the rest. The suggestions above are quite general, but as long as you don’t keep your intuition packed away in mothballs, it can readily supply you with a far more customized list. Simply ask yourself (and listen patiently for the answers, without arguing):

How could I invite more sacred moments into my life?

-or-

What would help me notice more of the sacred moments I’ve been missing?

Change the language to suit you: more joy, more fun, more meaning, more awareness, more everyday miracles… whatever speaks to you.

It’s counterintuitive to choose joy in difficult times, but that’s not because there’s nothing left to be joyful about or encouraged by. It’s usually either because we are too distracted or because we’ve given guilt the upper hand. Fortunately, we don’t have to stop working for a better future to acknowledge and experience today’s blessings.

I love what Maria Popova had to say on this topic:

“One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a countercultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite the abounding sorrow we barely survive but because of it, because joy — like music, like love — is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us.”

There is surely much work to be done. There is just as surely no virtue in making that work as miserable and uninspired as possible. May we open our hearts to new approaches that reveal the most alive parts of us, creating sanctuary when and where needed, and may we allow everyday sacred moments to serve as the wind beneath our wings as we gradually gain altitude.