Topic for February 20th

      In no time Nadine has responded with our topic for next month. The topic is....(drum-roll inserted here).....what does it mean to Be Present? We read that phrase all the time in books, and perhaps we have even used it ourselves in a conversation or two. Nadine is asking us to look deeper than what might be obvious....that physically, I am wherever my body is....and ask ourselves what it means to "be present to..." the moment, the person, the conversation.....to life itself?
      Perhaps the following excerpt will serve to jumpstart the thought process.

      “I open the refrigerator door to discover that I have no milk and so I decide to go down to the store to get some. I shut the door behind me, turn left into the street, follow the sidewalk for two blocks, turn left and left again, enter the store, snatch a carton of milk from the shelf, pay for it at the checkout, leave the store, turn right and right again, go back along the sidewalk for two blocks, turn right, unlock the door, and go back to the kitchen.
      The only evidence I have that any of this has happened is the cold carton of milk now clutched rather too firmly in my hand.
      As I try to reconstruct those ten vanished minutes, I recall being engrossed in a memory of something S said to me yesterday that I have been shrugging off ever since. It irked me and has become lodged as a stab of disquiet somewhere in the upper part of my stomach. I can remember that as I walked along, I was absorbed in what I should have said when the remark was made and what I would say were it repeated. The exact words of my response escape me. But I recall feeling gratified by their sharp blend of insouciance and cruelty, confirmed, in my imagination by the look of fear on S’s face as he is pinned to a rough wooden floor.
      As for the first chill hint of winter in the gust of wind that sent the last withered leaves scratching along the sidewalk before me as I pulled my warm collar tight against the skin of my neck, I have no recollection. And although I was staring intently in S’s direction, I failed to notice the waving arm of my friend perched on his bicycle across the street, his call and whistle, his smile as he rode off when the light turned green.” – Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs