Save the Date

Lately the phrase "save the date" has popped up in all kinds of ways. First there was the "save the date" refrigerator magnets that our daughter sent out urging people to set aside the day of her wedding. The picture on the magnet showed a small red devil starting to turn blue and it read, "They said it would freeze over before it happened but yes I'm getting married...so save the date."

On my e mail this morning there are three different headings that read, "save the date." And I'm participating in this wave of urgency by sending something out next week in hopes that a group I'm in charge of will, you guessed it, "save the date" for an event that I want them to attend.

Wow, I wonder if there is any time left? How many dates can we save? Maybe I ought to send out an announcement allowing some folks to "free some dates."

Another phrase is sometimes used to lift up the need to live life "now." The phrase is "Carpe Diem," which is usually translated, "seize the day." The rest of that phrase reads," quam minimum credula postero." (Aren't you impressed. My High School Latin teacher Ida Gordner just turned over in her grave.) The end of the phrase that is usually left off not only because Latin is if not a dead language at least sleeps a lot, is "and place no trust in tomorrow."

So why then do I have those e mails and refrigerator magnets cluttering my life? Why save dates if you can't trust that even tomorrow will show up?

Maybe if we put it all together the wisdom surfaces. There's nothing wrong with penciling in dates on a calendar that you hope will happen, but the turth is that today is the only "day" we have to really save. In Hebrew there is another phrase, "L'Chaim" which means "to life." A rough translation of that may be something like, "Pencil in dates but live now."

In my book, "Lost but Making Excellent Time," I quote Mark Nepo who writes that in our busy filled up life we "know a lot," but there is a difference between knowing and knowing well. To know well means to internalize that which we know rather than just encounter it. We know a lot but we know well too little. We are a culture that is ADD...we act like we all have attention deficient disorder when it comes to knowing well.

So...live in hope that you and I are not wasting today by saving so many dates but Carpe Diem and L'Chaim. It all begins with making sure that the best day to "save" is today.
Bless you,
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org