Overflow

Last night we were riding in the car coming back from dinner and I was smiling inside listening to two year old Petunia improvise her way through “Mary Had A Little Lamb” from her car seat in the back of our battered minivan. She was weaving in her own extemporaneous editorials on Jesus, sunshine, and teachers’ rules, particularly the breaking thereof. Olivia was being cute and laughing, scatting her accompaniment to Petunia’s meandering tune.

And in my heart that moment was complete, sufficient, as if there was no past or future to lead away from it or detract from it. There was only the Now, the Suchness, the fullness of that second. The laughter and singing carried the wisdom of a thousand Sunday sermons. These children, this woman by my side, in this car on this road, was the best I know of heaven. For that moment I was completely and totally without desire of any kind, not even desire to preserve the feeling, so grateful was I for that instant that I was happy to let it pass.

So that’s what I want for Christmas – enough gratitude in my life, enough appreciation of the prosaic blessings in the everyday, to be free of want. I want to not want.

I don’t even necessarily want more “heaven” moments like the one I decribed above. I just want the mind that can access the ones already in front of my face. Now how do I put that on my Amazon wish list?