5th century Chinese poet T’ao Ch’ien said, “a thousand years may be beyond me / but I can turn this morning into forever.”
I find that to be really lovely. And true. Yesterday my daughter turned 9, and It has me musing on time. The swiftness and dawdling of time. When a year is marked or a height is measured and dated on a doorway, I fall prey to predatory thief of time. I look around saying – now, where did it go? As if time were a misplaced set of keys. Time, of course, is socially constructed to make life more efficient. Time can also feel like a rake left in the yard of eternity, ready to smack you in the nose each time you step on its presence. We get used to its jarring presence. Instead of exploring timelessness, we stay put testing time’s reaction speed, and thus we suffer from constant nosebleeds from father time raking us across the snozz.
In this way, we suffer time because we do not enjoy the stark empty eternal presence behind it.
Perhaps this a good time to remind everyone that we start contemplative practices on time and we don’t want to be late to this practice that invites us to participate in the timelessness of Unseen Unborn Guileless Presence.
“a thousand years may be beyond me / but I can turn this morning into forever.”
Watching my daughter grow has taught me about consenting to the gift of forever in linear time, turning a morning into forever. She is not mine… but she is also not not mine either. She is a miraculous creature given to us to raise and nurture, immerse in communities of love with humans and non-humans, to encourage her flourishing as particular strand in the web of the whole. Ultimately, she belongs to God as she is continuously being spoken by God into existence in time, she is a gift in time that makes me eternally grateful.
My wayward point is this. Givenness in time finds its freedom in stride when it reaches gratitude; a condition that eternalizes. From this ground of gratitude the hands of time wave hello to love eternal who has always been standing there. This is the freshly baked loaf of living bread that gives life the world. Our role is to consent, not to desires of time, but to the eternality of what is given for the life of the world. This is Christ permeating in and radiating throughout creation.
Recognizing this gift, being grateful for what is given, grounds us in an abiding presence of Love that invites us to turn this morning into forever.
photo by Contemplify
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