Reflection of Moments Gone By

I learned to play piano at 41. I worked my fingers long enough that the uncanny dimension of being played appeared briefly: In those moments, beyond all logic, my hands started to behave more quickly than my mind, which was trying to read the notes and position my fingers. My teacher noticed this and thought I was ready to tackle my first piece by Bach, a minuet known as “Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena.”

By Mark Nepo

In the eighth measure of that minuet, a note smaller than the rest appears. Almost ghostlike, it hovers very near the others like a barely seeable angel or a hummingbird whose path is more readily seen than its body. It surprised me. My teacher called it a grace note—a note that, though played and heard, takes up no time; a note that matters, though it is timeless. And therein lies its grace.

Now, 20 years later, I realize this is another way to understand the paradox of epiphany, of moments that open and transcend their sense of ordinary time. In truth, every glimpse of eternity I’ve ever encountered has been a grace note that has affected how I see and hear, though it has taken up no time in the measure of my struggle. I find over and over that the instant that we’re washed open by the swell of the Universe is such a note of grace. And the wisdom of mystics and sages reverberates in the timeless space their presence holds open.

When these moments occur—when the mind is touched by something larger than its ability to understand, when the heart is moved by something deeper than its capacity to dive, when the impulse to speak is stirred by the presence of something that can’t be named—things happen that defy the boundaries of time. Such moments confirm that we’re part of a unity that’s always present but seldom clear, and to be touched by that presence changes our lives.

Moments like the moon—full and stark—rising over the garage between the oak and the maple in a friend’s backyard as we barbecue. Suddenly, the moon is calling in its white silence, drawing the smoke and fragrance out of the meat into the sky, and we, without a word, feel coated with a film of light from another world, the same as cavemen preparing their game at the mouth of their cave.

Moments like the morning of my annual CAT scan on the other side of cancer. When I realize that in the tenderness of being torn open by life, we’re like these small, red birds splashing themselves with water as the sun comes up, hoping we will heal without sealing our hearts over.

Moments like watching my friend’s 20-year-old cat adjust to being blind. All at once, the cat trying to make its way feels like our sense of being lost, no matter how we fill our calendars.

Moments of soft, relentless grace like one the other night, celebrating a birthday. The cake on the table; the lights off; all of us caught watching the sparkler on the cake. Each of us peering from our own personal seat of darkness, gathering as we do, fixed by the hiss of light flaring between us. Feeling the sparks fly, afraid one might burn us, hoping that it does.

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who is devoted to writing and teaching the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. He has been teaching poetry and spirituality for more than 40 years and is the New York Times best-selling author of The Book of Awakening.

This article was first published in the print edition of Yoga Journal Singapore, which is now Yogahood Online.