My Grandfather’s Column

Here and There

For a short time, long ago, I was chaplain to a psychiatric hospital. There, I used to take services in the hospital chapel, and they were for me exciting and enjoyable occasions, partly because I never knew what was going to happen next. I am told, though I don’t remember it, that I once asked my congregation: “Why are we all here?” to receive the immediate response: “Because we’re not all there.”

The real problem for most of us is precisely that, unlike those psychiatric patients, we are all there when we should be all here. When I should be paying attention to someone or something I find my mind floating off to something or someone else. Another way I find I am not all here is that, when involved in some discussion I want to produce some witty comment or idea and then the appropriate moment passes and I’ve missed the chance but then I still try to get back to a situation where I can bring up what I wanted to say. Meanwhile I’ve not been paying proper attention to what is actually being talked about.

“Don’t worry about to-morrow” were the wise words of Jesus; “Tomorrow will look after itself.” The more we learn to live in the here and now the happier we shall be and the better able we shall be to serve and love other people. I think it’s almost impossible for us never to take thought for the past or the future. We need to be able to go here and there but we could almost all of us learn from the mentally ill patient who declared himself not to be all there because he was “here” in the chapel of that hospital. It is better by far to be all here than all there.

–Peter Graham