Mindfulness, at the heart of it, is about listening -- listening to our present-moment experience in a way that allows us to be fully awake to life.  Because God infuses each moment with Himself, we have the opportunity to encounter God in this type of life-listening.  When we are listening in the moment, we can hear God.

McHugh reminds us of God's listening nature toward us.  And he casts a vision of a listening church, "a place where leaders listen to followers, adults listen to children, men listen to women, the majority listens to the minority, the rich listen to the poor, and insiders listen to outsiders" (p 203).  He urges us toward a stance of listening towards those we love and those who have hurt us, those we think we know and those we don't know at all. He highlights the role of attending carefully to our thoughts, emotions, and bodies if we are to grow personally and to love others well.  He encourages an open and gracious stance toward all of life's moments, toward the pain as well as the joy, noting that "loving your enemies will also mean learning to love the enemy voices in your head" (p 181).  McHugh manages to be gentle, kind, and funny, while also motivating his reader toward growth and transformation.

The Listening Life is a beautiful book, inspiring in its simplicity and depth.  Read it!  You will not be disappointed.  Or if you are, simply observe that emotion with curiosity and openness to your experience, just as it is in the moment.  Perhaps God will be speaking to you :). 

Life in this body is not something to try and save.  I am not to hold onto my life, not that I can live forever anyway.  There is not a breath I take, not a moment I am given, that is not a gift from the Creator.  This breath...and then this one...and then this one...  Each given directly from God, loaned to me during my time on earth.  I am a person with a body only because that's how God set things up for me, for now.  Remembering my mortality sets me back into my proper place as the creation, not the Creator. 

This can be terrifying, and it can also be freeing.  It can free me up to live small in the world, to focus on being rather than to doing.  It can free me up to accept the gift of each moment with nothing to prove.  Remember that you are dust.

This can be terrifying, and it can also be humbling.  That self-righteous attitude I'm carrying around?  That anger I harbor toward my neighbor?  That pride I feel about my accomplishments, and that fear I feel of failure?  Remember that you are dust.

This can be terrifying, and it can also be invigorating.  Life is a terrific adventure.  We live in these incredibly fragile, incredibly strong bodies -- jars of clay.  Within us lives the Holy Spirit of God.  Indwelling our dust is God himself.  God loves this dust, enough to join in the dusty adventure on earth himself for a time 2000 years ago, enough to inhabit our jars today.  Remember that you are dust. 

Let's live with honesty about our lives, about our deaths.  Know that we are jars of clay, made not of our own hands.  Let's be fully mindful of each moment that we can, knowing that there is no joy in trying to hold on forever to this perishable life. Drink of each moment as it comes, and find that which is deeper than these bodies of dust--God's spirit deep within, sustaining us throughout this life and the life to come. 

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”