Once a month, I have the great privilege of co-leading a program called Mindfulness Moments with Andrea Thomas, MA, LLP, a psychologist at Henry Ford Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. What we do together is very simple, yet also surprisingly expansive.
We invite people to arrive on a Zoom screen, something that has become totally routine. And for twenty minutes, Andrea leads us through a mindfulness reflection. We close our eyes, listen, and imagine. Then for ten minutes, I guide us in conversation. Just 30 minutes, once a month.
But when people become present and allow imagination to open, what emerges is often deeply moving.
At our most recent gathering, Andrea invited us to imagine a mountain. It could be one we’ve seen or visited before, or one entirely of our own making.
During the reflection, she asked us to notice everything that changes across a year. Animals move and scatter. Plants grow. Snow falls, then melts. Rocks break off. Fog comes in so thick that sometimes you wouldn’t even know a mountain was there at all.
And yet, the mountain remains.
Even when it can’t be seen, it is present.
It is changing all the time, and yet it is also steady, essentially unmoving, save for the tiniest, most imperceptible shifts of tectonic plates over time.
There are moments when people are like that, too.
Sometimes we are hidden.
Sometimes we are visible.
The core of ourselves is solid and unchanging.
And paradoxically, we are also always changing.
When I lived in Pasadena, California, I had a beautiful view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Every so often, fog would settle in so completely that if you didn’t already know the mountains were there, you’d have no idea of their presence. Then the fog would lift, and there they were again. Most of the time, they appeared gray-brown. Occasionally, they were capped with snow.
Unmistakably the same mountains.
Always revealing something new.
I find myself returning to that image.
I invite us to consider the parts of ourselves that are hidden, and the parts that are visible. I invite us to connect with the parts that remain steady, and the ways we are being shaped and changed right now.
And I want to leave you with a short poem, written anonymously by a Jewish person during World War II. It was found in the cellar of a concentration camp. It reads:
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when I can’t feel it.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.
Perhaps one of these lines will resonate with us.
Maybe among the parts of us that are hidden or present,
or the parts that are unchanging and yet constantly changing.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 