High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘time’

There is no time here, no dipping into yesterdays, no next.  Every instant is fresh and complete.  Each thing is a part of the whole, perfect and ever-changing.

There is no body here.  The eye, the wing, the feathers, the foot are one with the water, the air.  It is all a dance.  There is no outside.

Sometimes hope speaks in a whisper:  The slight softening of the treetops as buds swell, despite the snow, a waver of uncertainty as someone says no, a quick sparkle of light in a mother’s eyes.

Hope takes any opening it can. It’s undaunting in its quest to reach your heart.  Realize that.  And when it comes to you, welcome it in gladness and give it space to grow.

Hear its wisdom and its promise:  Time has a way of doing things in the right order.  There is always a way.

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The day doesn’t know that it is the last one in November.  It doesn’t think itself significant in any way.

But because it hangs there, at the end of my calendar, I want to hold on to it, to stretch out its moments, to make it take its time.

It has its own time, of course.  But my mind can stretch its blues and grays, its bare branches and still unfrozen pond, even as the first snowflakes drift down from the sky.

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This is no ordinary container.  It’s deeper than DNA and holds all of time, all the golden pieces.

Some bits dance bright as yesterday, fresh as sunlit leaves.  Some have fallen and faded.  But still you can sift through the rustling layers and hold their precious stories in your hand.

To read the deeper ones, you need patience and great concentration.  Still, nothing is lost.

Even when they slide beneath time’s waters, beyond the personal, the imprint of their stories remains, cloaked in legend and myth, but telling their truths just the same and still golden, still telling us who we are.

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Time wraps her ribbons ‘round and ‘round the globe, trailing seasons and lives behind her in a train of endless tales.

Some say she doesn’t exist at all.  But her markers are everywhere –  on rock, on skin, on bone.

Hers is an ancient dance, orchestrated by the stars, measuring their spaces, keeping separate the intervals between things.

She is the grand coordinator, the mistress of events, the weaver of coincidence and synchronicity, the keeper of secrets and mysteries.

Nothing happens without her knowing, and always exactly when it should, regardless of how it may seem.

Trust her.  She moves in perfection according to Great Laws that far transcend our understanding.  And whether we perceive it or not, she unfolds all things in the right order.

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Here, in the center of this calm, a scent rises, a leaf falls.  The waters of time are sailing into tomorrow.

Soon this day will be but a dream, its emerald turned to gold, its stillness become a rush of wind and wings.

But now, tomorrow is the dream.  Now the sleepy afternoons still linger and the willows sway beside the pond.  I let its cool waters buoy me.  Its colors feed my soul.

When night falls, the elders, having sensed the subtle shift in things, will search the sky for signs. Then they will sleep beneath a now of stars and moonlight and the waters of time will sail on.

The subtle fluffiness that decorates the wooded hills is taking on a hint of red now.  Bit by bit, the maples are unfolding their buds.  Cell by cell, their sap sings its way upward, nurturing them. Photon by photon, their tiny leaves drink in the light and expand.

That’s the way all transformation happens: one little step at a time.  Choice by choice, we shape the patterns of our lives.  Bit by bit, we process our experiences.  Little by little, our understanding grows.

That doesn’t mean that change happens slowly.  Blink, and the hills will be green. Every moment is wholly new; nothing stands still.  Whole lifetimes rush past in an instant.  Time is a matter of personal perception.

But the kaleidoscopic flow of it all is a choreographed affair, danced to a music beyond our hearing, playing for our unfolding, sung in the key of joy.

Even now, just out of sight, shy rabbits huddle in the grass, and deer, and all their cousins.  Far more is happening than meets the eye.

Beneath the snow, wee miracles are hidden, curled tight inside their sheltering pods, burrowed in, floating in their secret seas.

Oh, the wondrous potentials that wait beneath the surface of things!  Now they are hardly even dreams.  And yet they hold the patterns and something nurtures them, something tender and wise, as they creep toward us through time.

Here on this still afternoon, you can almost hear them.  In the crisp air, the diamond flakes of breeze-borne snow seem to sparkle with anticipation.

But the patient sky, keeping the rhythm of the seasons, spreads winter across the land.  The miracles are meant to be exactly where they are, resting beneath this deep beauty.

Oh, her amazing costumes!  Now she wears the full moon, now its thinnest smile.  Now she’s starlight, dissolving into the morning, now a crystal of ice, melting into the rushing stream.

Now she’s a baby, coming wet into the world, now an old man turning to dust.

She wears all our faces, sings all of our songs, carries all our dreams and bends around them, giving them form.

She flies across the heavens with eagles and stars, and swims in the deep with whales.

Now she’s antiquity, now the farthest tomorrow.  Time is but her music, turning, turning, turning her, in her ever-changing colors, as she mesmerizes us with her illusions, making them seem so true.

In the grand sweep of time, nothing is lost.  Forms change.  The drift of wildflowers turns to drifts of snow.   It’s all a dance, a now you see it, now you don’t game of peek-a-boo.

The moon circling the planet, the planet circling the sun, the countless suns whirling around the galaxy’s center, blinking in, blinking out, are mere  movements in the joyous ballet.

Weaving through the quantum hologram, time sings all potentials into being.  The minutes, the hours, the ten thousand years are but the flowing rhythm of the song.  And we, riding its stream, are both its expression and its witnesses.

Today I stand on a Pennsylvania marsh beneath a November sky, and marvel at the choreography.