dual personalities

Facebook, as you know, is a veritable font of new-agey platitudes and politically-correct advice. Once in a rare while, however, I find something that a friend has posted that makes me sit up and pay attention.

Lao Tzu, or Laozi, is traditionally regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and as the founder of Taoism. I readily admit I know next to nothing about eastern religions. (If you are interested, you can read about it here.)

Whatever. I just think these particular words are eminently true. It is SO important to live in the day.

Here is what Frederick Buechner says about it:

“Much as we wish, not one of us can bring back yesterday or shape tomorrow. Only today is ours, and it will not be ours for long, and once it is gone it will never in all time be ours again. Thou only knowest what it holds in store for us, yet even we know something of what it will hold. The chance to speak the truth, to show mercy, to ease another’s burden. The chance to resist evil, to remember all the good times and good people of our past, to be brave, to be strong, to be glad.”

― Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

So BE in the present. Or at least try hard. Look around you. Pay attention. Listen. Be brave, be strong, be glad.

Praise the Lord.