The Last Day

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accept the challenge, be grateful, be kind to yourself, New Year, pray, reflection, rejoice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, year in review

Today is the last day of the year. That is not “new news” to anyone but it does invite reflection. My mother used to tell us not to wish for time to pass more quickly no matter what we were waiting for, because as we got older things – time – would seem to speed up and we would wish it would slow down. She was a wise woman and now I know the truth of her prediction.

Today I hope to take some time to reflect on 2019 asking myself questions about the high points and the low points: what were they and why do I see them that way. I will consider the important happenings and the people who figured most importantly into my days. What have I learned from/during this year? Is there anything left “hanging” that needs to be completed and am I willing/able to complete it?

You have your own questions and memories from the year. In your review, should you wish to “accept the challenge,” be kind to yourself in judging it all. Be grateful for all you have learned about yourself that you wish to take into 2020 (a great image for seeing clearly) and thank God for another chance to begin. Rejoice that you are still alive and smile at the people who cross your path today. Pray for those who need your prayer and smile at God who knows how to answer better than we do. Have a blessed new year…

Standard Time

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daylight saving time, heart of life, John Philip Newell, light, Praying With the Earth, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time

Sometime in the night my cell phone pulled back an hour to afford me another hour of sleep. Just like that…done…and now we are on Eastern Standard Time here. It’s a bit of a lesson, sounding like “God said ‘Let there be light and there was light'” — but not really. We have no power over the elements or the “space/time continuum,” as it is called. And most of us won’t be quite as satisfied when it is dark at 5:00EST today, rather than at 6:00 like yesterday. There’s a very long article on Wikipedia today explaining the origin and practice of Daylight Saving Time – as well as the places which have exempted themselves over the years. There is, of course, a legal process to follow in order for a state – or territory of the U.S. – to change or not to change and reasons given for the choice. Still, it remains a bit of a conundrum for me, seeming like it is just one more thing that we complicate to serve our own needs.

I must admit, however, it was very comfortable to lie in bed this morning, dozing in and out and watching the light come…So here’s a prayer for the morning to accept and be grateful for what we’ve been given in this glorious universe!

Light within all light, Soul behind all souls at the breaking of dawn, at the coming of day we wait and watch. Your light within the morning light, Your Soul within the human soul, Your presence beckoning us from the heart of life. In the dawning of this day let us know fresh shinings in our soul. In the growing colours of new beginnings all around us let us know the first lights of our heart. Great Star of the morning, Inner Flame of the universe, let us be a colour in this new dawning. (Praying with the Earth by John Philip Newell)

Time Flies…

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courage, feel, live, meet people, never too late, see, sunrise, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, timing

This morning when I woke the sky was still in the process of lighting up. According to my phone, I still had at least 25 minutes before the alarm would sound to wake me. I settled down to wait or doze…but something in me said ten minutes later that it was time for my day to begin. How fortunate an impetus! When I opened my eyes and looked out my windows in both directions – east and south – I was treated to a lovely wash of color, soft in pinkish-orange light, that lasted less than two minutes before fading into the monochrome glimmer that spells d-a-y. What a gift of perfect timing! Something not to be missed, I thought.

I’ve had several conversations already this week about the speed of the summer and how time seems to be passing too quickly. This morning convinced me once again that time is a precious commodity not to be squandered. Deciding to explore a bit, I typed “quotes about time” into the subject line on my phone. I read some familiar things, but there was a quote that seemed the perfect start for this day. It was from Eric Roth, from his screenplay for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. See what you think.

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late, or in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There is no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

What could be a more perfect “thought for the day?” Let’s live it!

Do It Now!

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15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, advvice, change, daily, do it now, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, urgency

For all you procrastinators out there (in which company I put myself these days) I offer today an interesting suggestion from Brian Johnson of “Optimize.” He got the idea in a session with John Maxwell and his book, 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, whose thesis was this: You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. Maxwell recounted his experience of a seminar with W. Clement Stone who spoke about having a sense of urgency (something I’ve been hearing about from people a lot lately). The talk was called “Do it now.” His idea was as follows.

Before you get out of bed every morning, say “do it now” fifty times. At the end of the day before you go to sleep, the last thing you should do is say “do it now” fifty times.” It sounds a bit like overkill but Johnson says that he did it for the next six months every morning and evening and it left him with a tremendous sense of urgency.

Maybe it’s time for you…or me to take this advice. “Nothing ventured nothing gained,” right?

The Speed of Life

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accept, apostles, Henry Van Dyke, living in love, love, surrender to life, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, time is eternity

I’m sitting this morning in a place of contradiction: considering the assumed slowness of time for the apostles who are waiting for “they know not what” (see yesterday’s post) and wondering how we could possibly be in the month of June this quickly. Time becomes a concept much less comprehensible than it used to be (dare I say “when I was young?”). There’s nothing I can do but watch it pass and surrender to life – whether or not I finish a day with everything crossed off my list.

As I sit in this situation and evaluate my willingness to accept it and move forward, a long-ago quote floats through my mind. Since I can remember only snippets of it, I resort to “my new best-friend,” the internet, and find even more than I expected.

Henry Van Dyke wrote: Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

My satisfaction with finding this quote is in the wonderful last clause that I don’t think I ever heard! Wonderful because it erases any frustration or concern about conquering time in the aforementioned surrender to life. Living in love is a noble goal and a great work in this moment in our beautiful but violent world. If we can add our quotient of love to the energy of the planet, we have a better chance of seeing it – and us – survive. And isn’t that reason enough to try?

Taking Time

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anxiety, experiences, future, gratitude, Jesus, John, live in the present moment, past, present, St. John the Evangelist, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time

Today Christians mark the feast of St. John, “Apostle and Evangelist.” There is much commentary about this companion of Jesus, the one known as “the beloved disciple” who was at his side at the Last Supper and the Crucifixion and figures prominently in the Resurrection narratives. His own gospel passage of the Resurrection is read at services today (JN 20: 1-8) and seems a bit out of place for two days after the feast of the birth of Jesus. Because of this telescoped view of the beginning and end of the life of Jesus, I was brought to a consideration of the concept of time.

We know, of course, the beginnings and ends of things that have happened in the past. We live as well as we can the present time in which we live. Because of present events we may be looking toward the future with expectation or anxiety, but ultimately it makes the most sense to live in the moment we are in. As many wise people have said in different ways, the present is the only moment we are sure of, the only one in which we are confident that we can change or choose. An internet post from a site called exactlywhatistime.com was quite prolific in its definitions that began by saying the following.

Time is something we deal with every day, and something that everyone thinks they understand. However, a compact and robust definition of time has proved to be remarkably tricky and elusive.

Before I get too bungled up in philosophical wanderings, let me suggest that the best way for me to look at time is the one that will allow me to look kindly on the past from which I have learned lessons in living well, the present in which I garner deeper understanding and gratitude each day and the future to which I look with hope for ever better applications of what I have learned.

I am still left wondering, however, about the juxtaposition of gospel passages from Christmas to Resurrection events this week. Are we meant, do you suppose, to live everything in the present, to contain all experiences at this moment? A question for physicists perhaps…What do you think?

Where Wisdom Lives

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balance, Benedictine, calendar, fulfillment, heart, intention, psalm 90, spirituality, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, time management, wisdom

The beginning of a new week is always a good time to take a breath and see what lies ahead. That task presupposes a look at the calendar to be sure we have noted all the “goings-on” and the preparation necessary for each event. I’m reminded of that practice by the first line from this morning’s psalm that prays: Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. (PS 90:12) The first clause of that sentence sounds like the necessity of knowing what day and date it is (something that escapes me sometimes lately) but the second clause adds a goal to the “numbering.” It implies good time management but also good choices about how we are spending the time that we have.

Benedictine spirituality runs on a time schedule that is based on a balanced day of activities and rest. A good exercise to illustrate this is to draw a circle and divide it into four equal quadrants entitled prayer alone, prayer together, work alone and work together – and then fill it in with everything you do by yourself and with other people. Rest/leisure is included as “work alone” and should not be ignored. It’s good, especially if one is just beginning to look for this balance, to draw two circles for the day labeled Start and End to check at the end of the day to see whether intention and fulfillment merge. I find it a good way to test procrastination tendencies as well as workaholism. And as the psalm seems to suggest, wisdom is found in the middle path.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once Again, A Reminder

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answers, beauty, Hearts on Fire, impatience, instability, listen, progress, questions, Rainer Maria Rilke, slow work of God, strength, Teilhard de Chardin, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, trust

There are two adjacent ranch-style houses on our road whose owners each planted four trees in a row across their front yard. I have watched them grow over the years and sometimes wonder if it was the desire of the owners to have a lot of shade, to hide from the road or just to satisfy their love of trees. They have seemed to me as they’ve grown like a line of sentinels from one yard to the other. Because I am always driving when I pass them, I really don’t know if they are the same kind of trees; I just admire their beauty and their strength.

On my drive home early yesterday evening I was luxuriating in the lush green all around me (not much traffic on our road at 7:00 on a Sunday) when I was brought up short by those trees! Suddenly, after years of tiny incremental growth, they are mammoth and have totally obscured the houses! Today I wonder if I need to pay more attention to the obvious lesson that I have been getting on our own land and now elsewhere about what Teilhard de Chardin calls “the slow work of God” and Rilke describes as living the questions rather than being impatient to find answers. Sometimes it seems as if they have conspired with God on the same message!

I was not surprised this morning on opening the Jesuit prayerbook, Hearts on Fire, to find Teilhard’s words on the page before me. So once again I will try to slow down and listen carefully.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time…(p.102)

 

 

 

 

 

The Present Moment

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A Deep Breath of Life, Alan Cohen, calendar, mindfulness, present, present moment, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time

When thinking about the necessities of life lately, the first thing on my list is my calendar. I used to be able to keep track of a month’s activities so I would be where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to do, only checking my calendar rarely for exactitude. Granted, that was when I was teaching high school and living a relatively stable routine. Now my activities vary so much from day to day that I sometimes am not sure what the day will bring until I look at my calendar for a reminder and sometimes I’m looking just to see what day of the week today is! I use the excuse that my activities are much more varied these days and that there is lots more “stuff” crowding my brain. While this is true, I suppose it has something to do with the aging process as well. Today I’m considering this situation as a call to live in the present moment.

Alan Cohen has reminded me of the value of this kind of thinking in an anonymous quote for today from his book, A Deep Breath of Life. He writes: The past is a canceled check, the future is a promissory note and the present is cash in hand. So with my bankroll of 16 hours or so in my pocket before I go to sleep again, I hope to set forth mindfully and treat each moment of this sunny day as priceless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in the Present

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change, conscious awareness, constant, present moment, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, year

I’ve been astonished lately by the swiftness of time passage. I can hardly believe that May is waiting in the wings, appearing just after the coming weekend. I see or hear news of young people going off to college when my last marker was their sixth-grade band concert; trying to guess anyone’s age is a futile occupation lately. At the same time, the turning of the year seems so long ago in this season of never-ending winter. (I dare not say that aloud as it might jinx what looks like a true spring finally appearing!)

Time seems a concept less understandable than I formerly thought and, although there never seems to be enough of it for the important things, my sense of what is truly important has shifted lately. What appears now to be most crucially important is what appears before me – or within me – at any given moment. I am coming to understand that just as change is the only constant, presence is the only way to meet the changes happening all the time. The present moment is the only one we can be sure of, thus the necessity of attending to it with gusto. I am coming to realize that knowing this and choosing to practice conscious awareness so as not to miss the moment is enough. Now comes the task of staying awake…