In one of his delightful and insightful poems from Sabbaths, 1998, Wendall Berry writes these lines.

This is the time you’d like to stay.
Not a leaf stirs. There is no sound.
The fireflies lift light from the ground.
You’ve shed the vanities of when
And how and why, for now. And then
The phone rings. You are called away.

Where and how we find such moments?  Many mornings, for me, temporarily in this time of solitude or later pausing to watch the birds and squirrels intently go about their day and in God’s presence, I have hope and a renewed spirit. I realize the when, how and why don’t matter in this moment, the moment that is really all I have.

But then, talk, circumstances, what some might call my reality brings me back to that self conscious, vain, selfish awareness that the when, how, and why do matter and are in that moment, everything.

How do I stay longer, linger in that place, that place of a different kind of knowing?