Greetings, dear Friends of Silence!
When you think of the concept of "time," what comes to mind? Usually it is schedules and deadlines and rushing around! But there’s another perspective . . . think of mountains, oceans, rivers, ancient trees, those things of this world that suggest words like "eternal" and "everlasting." For we know the whole concept of time is our idea, not our Creator’s, and that there is no such artificial construct in eternity. Even if we have to schedule it by this world’s idea of time, we can step into that stream of eternity at any time by going within, entering the Great Silence. There we become part of it, and while we are there time no longer exists. Turning inward, becoming part of no-time, refreshes us and often colors our perceptions so that when we return to this world of deadlines and time constraints, we are more able to "go with the flow" and view our world with new vision.
The end of time will not come like people think. Time will end in Light because it began in darkness. Time will end when humanity accepts eternity as its home . . . when people understand the true meaning of peace so they can choose love over fear.
What a gift is the recognition of our multiple streams of time! Most of us have had some experience of breaking out of the monochronic monotony of one-thing-afteranother. Time flies; time crawls or stands still. We regularly experience the
spectrum of party time, hanging out time, condensed time, wasting time, scheduled time, falling in love time, anxiety time, creative time, borning time, dying time, meditation time, timeless time. Ecstasy and terror have their own temporal cadences, and in high creative moments as well as in mystical experience, the categories of time are strained by the tension of eternity.
How many oceans have vanished in sand, how much sand has been prayed hard in the stone, how much time has been wept away in the singing horn of the seashells, how much mortal abandonment in the fishes' pearl eyes, how many morning trumpets in the coral, how many star patterns in crystal, how much seed of laughter in the gulls' throat, how many threads of longing for home have been traversed on the nightly course of the constellations, how much fertile earth for the root of the word: You -- behind all the crashing patterns of the secrets You --
Sabbath time. Sabbatical time. Jubilee time. Time to rest, to delight in what is given, to breathe in the beauty. Time to be fallow, to heal wounds, forgive, regenerate. Time to restore the world to its primal pattern. Time to anticipate a new world in which justice, mercy, and peace truly flourish. Time that anticipates the end and fullness of all time when tears, mourning, and death itself will yield to the bountiful, blooming garden of God’s own time.