What Just Happened

A quiet reading.

I gave a talk on presence yesterday.

Since returning home, I have found myself wondering what, if anything, really happened. Not only for those who were there, but for me.

The preparation for the talk began two years ago, when I first encountered a line in a book about the loss of experience in a distracted age. At the time, I was trying to understand how much our screens were shaping us—especially for those of us who sit with others in spiritual direction.

The question was practical at first.
How do we remain attentive in a world that is constantly pulling our attention away?

But somewhere along the way, the question shifted.

It became less about what to guard against, and more about something inward. The word that kept returning was presence. What it is. What it asks of us. What it might mean to recover it in a life where distraction has become almost natural.

The talk itself went well. There was honest sharing.

But now, in the quiet afterward, another question remains.

What just happened?

Did something change in me through the work of preparing and giving the talk?
Did something shift in those who heard it?

Afterward, one participant said to me,
“We all know this. It is just good to hear someone say it.”

That stayed with me.

Because it feels true. Not only for them, but for me.

There is something about saying a thing out loud—about giving it voice—that gives it weight. It brings shape to something that had been present but not fully seen.

Not new, exactly.
But more fully inhabited.

And maybe that is part of what presence is.

Not discovering something we did not know,
but coming to stand more fully inside what has been there all along.

I am not sure.

But something has begun.

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