MOMENTS IN TIME

 

Heaven and Earth

Time is a creation of human beings marking their passage with a timeless creator. 

Humans have divided one revolution of the earth and one trip around the sun to create time.

Our mind is constrained by space and time to create our experience of reality.

The moments between “Have a nice day” and “Good night moon” define a life. 

We need to spend these moments wisely as our time accelerates as it draws to a close. 

This mortal bodily life is merely a transition to an eternal spirit life. 

Seek solitude and take time to be alone without experiencing loneliness.

Take the path less traveled and see life as an endless adventure as you follow your bliss.

Appreciate the tenaciousness of your ancestral DNA, as the frost cannot reach deep roots.

Choose a life partner that makes you feel alive and stands with you against the world.

Support your life partner with compliments and dreams for the future.

To change your present life, invest in your life skills that prompts others to bid for them.

Always remember, only you can be a force for your time.  So pay attention to the dynamics.

Experience life to the fullest and remember that not all who wander are lost.

Only one divine man walked the earth in perfection, so understand and respect others.

 

Henry van Dyke has written:

“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 not.”

 

And Ralph Waldo Emerson councils:

“Write it on your heart

that every day is the best day in the year.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day

who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.

You have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.

Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;

begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit

to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,

with its hopes and invitations,

to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

 

 

Happiness Prayer Flag, Tibet

The Good Samaritan, Israel

When tragedy strikes a friend or the entire world, we may catch ourselves offering up “thoughts and prayers”, almost as a knee jerk reaction.  It’s a given when some politician grabs the microphone to offer his condolences.  And I’ve noticed myself and others starting to have a negative reaction to what has become a cliché or platitude that has no meaning anymore because it has been said so many times without any meaningful action as a consequence of the tragedy.  The phrase has become good fodder for the creators of memes.

I’m reminded of the parable of the Good Samaritan where a man asks Jesus “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  He asks how the man reads the law?  And he rightly replies that I should love God and my neighbor.  But, the man asks, “who is my neighbor?”

Jesus then relates the parable of a man who was traveling alone and was beaten and robbed, leaving him half dead.  Both a priest and a Levite passed by the man, but offered no assistance while perhaps offering “thoughts and prayers.”  Then, a Samaritan who the Jews hated, stopped and provided aid.    

Jesus asked “which of the three do you think was a neighbor to the man?”  The expert in the law easily answers, “The one who had mercy on him.”  And Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

The Tibetan prayer flag above states that “Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.”  Offering “thoughts and prayers” is surely a wonderful thought, but when those words are all that is offered without some positive action to attempt to right the wrong, those words become cliché and merely platitudes.    

OUR THREE LIVES

The Hourglass of Life, Jamestown, NC

 We have three lives and the second begins when we realize that we have likely lived more years than we have left and our hourglass is less than half full.  That understanding puts many activities in proper perspective according to whether or not they are worth the exchange of diminishing life hours. 

Our third eternal life begins once the final grain of sand passes through that hourglass of our earthly existence and we realize that unconditional love was the answer all of the time.

TIBETAN PRAYER FLAGS

Tibetan Prayer Flags, Jamestown, NC

PEACE, HAPPINESS, COURAGE, LOVE, TRANQUILITY & WISDOM

These traditional Tibetan Prayer Flags are placed where one desires to bring harmony to the surrounding area. Tibetans believe that as the flags are moved by the wind, prayers and mantras on them will spread goodwill and compassion into the pervading space.

Thoughts and prayers help us to align ourselves with the actions required to accomplish the harmonious will of all creation.

“Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.”

TOASTING AN OLD FRIEND

Endless Summer, Reading, KS

I’m toasting an old high school friend tonight that I just learned had recently passed away.  The phone rings and it’s another high school friend that is calling to see if I had heard the sad news. It was good to talk to another kindred spirit at the time and reminisce about those youthful days of summer prior to entering the adult world of work and sobering responsibility. We fondly talked about the summer nights riding the ridges on the outskirts of town and dragging the gut on Main Street in our small central Kansas town.

Remembering the good times of our late teens always brings a smile, perhaps mainly because that’s a time in America where life is about as uncomplicated as it gets. And our prospects for an eternal earthly life seemed at the time about as plausible as the ability to acquire underage beer. We didn’t have the muddy waters of the Chattahoochee but we did spend many hours fishing on the Cottonwood and Neosho rivers.

We’d gather in the evening at a drive-in after leaving our minimum wage jobs to discuss anything and everything. Then we’d pool our loose change to buy a few gallons of gas for one of our cars at less than half a dollar a gallon. We’d fire up a filtered Marlboro cigarette and find someone’s older brother or cousin to get us a cold six pack. The summer evening air wafted through the naturally air conditioned windows as Wolf Man Jack would spin 45 RPM records and howl at the moon with us. The local radio station didn’t play rock ‘n roll music but during the night we could tune in to the powerful stations down south at the Texas border and up north to the WLS radio station in the far away big city of Chicago. We’d loudly and passionately sing about Chunky Peanut Butter and La Bamba as our chopped and customized cars cruised under the flashing street lights.

I recently read that when you remember a past event, you are actually remembering the last time you remembered it, not the event itself. Perhaps that explains why the details of those summer nights, now so distant in the fading past, are becoming more translucent. But I still remember how we felt. We were immortal and we were as carefree as we would ever be in life. We shared a wonderful camaraderie and we were truly a band of brothers. We only briefly paused to ponder the future long enough to know that now was the time of complete freedom, this time was very limited and we could never return. So we read liberating books like On the Road by Jack Kerouac, smoked cigarettes and drove fast like James Dean, sang Elvis rock ‘n roll songs with the windows open, downed a cool Silver Bullet on a sultry night and enjoyed each other’s company like family. 

 And the wide world of the military, the Vietnam war, full time careers, marriage, children, home mortgages, retirement savings accounts, business travel, annual reviews, life-long education and training, job loss, divorce, accidents, serious health issues and yes, death, were all waiting beyond the long, hot, seemingly endless summer of the end of our innocence.