Father McNally used to say, “You were not made for the here and now; you were made for the then and there.” This tripped me up for a bit. I think I’m starting to get it.
At first I thought it was obvious: we are made for heaven, not earth. This is a classic Manicheist dictum–essentially the material world is bad and the spiritual world is good. But that doesn’t sound like Father McNally. He was excited about being a human being, about being able to taste and touch and paint and see and imagine. We, at least as we manifest on this earth, are quite well made “for earth.” We can taste, smell, touch, etc. How are we not made for here?
I don’t think he was necessarily talking about the “me” that includes the body but the “I,” our soul, which is more than a body, which transcends this physical world. We were not made for here; rather, our soul–the true Self–is a part of God that longs for communion with God again. But even if this were the case, this is quite a step. It still sidesteps our reality–that we are Homo sapiens living on planet earth, that we need to eat, sleep, breathe, and live in order to, well, have experiences that can allow us to learn about God. So I’m not ready to give up the first part of this saying yet.
“You were not made for the here and now.” Here and now is a common phrase among spiritual people. In Island, the birds on the utopian island are chanting, “Attention!” and “Here and Now!” as reminders to live in the present. All throughout the spiritual/awakened/enlightened world are texts that talk about being present, being in the now. From Eckhart Tolle to Ram Das, it’s pervasive. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Be Here Now by Ram Das, taught the western world exactly that: reality is what’s happening now, not what happened in the past or what might happen in the future. Right now. Here and now.
“You were made for the then and there.” This assumes that there’s an existence beyond physical death. Let’s give merit to this assumption by crediting, well, nearly every religion, spiritual person, and psychedelic adventurer who ever lived and assume this is true. It’s a commonly held belief that this life on earth is preparation for the next life, or our next series of lives on this earth (i.e. reincarnation). Regardless of form or fortune, what we do here counts, in some regard, in what happens after we physically die.
One of the primary teachings of Jesus was about the Kingdom of God. Supposedly, this is where we want to go when we die. It’s the “then and there.” But then Jesus said something that most people don’t like to talk about: “The Kingdom of God is in your midst.” Father McNally referenced this a lot. What’s that about? Allow me to bring this all together.
Father McNally was right–we are made for the then and there, for the Kingdom of God. But the Kingdom of God is in our midst, in the here and now on earth. We have access to the Kingdom if we want to enter; we can see the Kingdom if we want to see it; we can experience the Kingdom if we want to experience it. But what is the Kingdom? What is the Then and There? It is Here and Now. Anthony de Mello says that eternal life is the eternal now, the now that never began and never ends. It’s a place beyond time, another dimension that we cannot know or understand or comprehend but can experience. And how can we experience it? By being present to it; by ministering to it. By merely being, here and now. By stepping into this moment. Not meditating or analyzing, not mindfulness or intellect or yoga or philosophy, but by being. By not being preoccupied by the past or future or everything that isn’t happening and existing right here and right now. The Kingdom of God, the Then and There, is the eternal now, the eternal Here and Now. The Here and Now is the Then and There.
Guess what? We are conditioned animals, and we are not conditioned for stepping into the here and now. That makes it less convenient. It’s almost impossible to escape this inconvenience. Possible, sure, but it requires a disciplined and aware mind and being. That’s what Father McNally meant–we are not made for the here and now. That’s not how we got here as animals, as human beings. We got here by learning how to survive, by struggling for existence, and by fighting to pass on our genetics. Survival of the fittest. That’s how the here and now works, right? Maybe. But plants and animals and other living things don’t care about the past or the future, they just care about the here and now. But we aren’t just animals–we’re ensouled beings. Animals with souls that long to reconnect with the source of all creation, an existence that is only possible by entering the Kingdom of God, the eternal now, the Then and There with very little baggage, so little that we can pass through the eye of a needle. This reconnection seems to be the direction of creation–conscious, ensouled beings, capable of having a relationship with God, longing to reconnecting with God. And the way to prepare for that reconnection is to simply be here and now, to merely be present to what is unfolding before us. Nothing more. Because that is an experience of what is, and God is all that is. So experiencing the here and now is experiencing God, which may just be the then and there.
What does this mean for us?
Be present. In your experience of now is the experience of the eternal now, God Godself. The way to experience this moment is fully, with all your senses. Taste, touch, smell, see, and hear creation and your place in it, seemingly distant but all-too-connected to the source which created and is it all. This earth is a spiritual training ground. It may have required human beings to destroy the planet in order to realize it and embrace our role as conscious beings, but it’s not too late for each and every one of us to step into this moment and experience God for ourselves. It’s what we’re made for.