Time is Love

The thoughts blow in uninvited during certain times of our lives.  And the feelings accompanying these thoughts make us pause, at least for a moment, and wonder how the days of our lives keep coming and going like the sea tide under our feet.

Sometimes, we welcome these thoughts and can wrestle with a greater truth.  On other occasions, we don’t or just can’t.  So, we move quickly to replace them with thoughts we believe will make us happier.  Or, at the very least, thoughts that masquerade the reality of our current state.  Nevertheless, whether we welcome or resist them, we have no power over the truth of where these thoughts originate.  Deep down, we know that we cannot find our way out.   Deep down, we know that we cannot conquer them with “happy thoughts.”  We can’t learn our way out of it.  Nor can we “pull up our bootstraps” and live through it.

Tomorrow is one of the most attended religious days of the year, Ash Wednesday.  A day when we come face to face with a greater truth.  A truth that tells us both of our mortality and our need to repent (re-think).  It is a day when there is absolutely no obligation to go.  Nevertheless, we come in droves.

In the face of the growing cultural sentiment that invites us to believe “I’m ok and you’re ok,” as long as we both think so, tomorrow invites us into something different.  A more profound truth that is always present and made visible to us, usually during times of a health scare or when we stare at the finality of death itself.  It is a truth that can be accessed anytime within the silence of our hearts and a truth that frees us from the bondage of our ego and pride.

Switzerland is a country synonymous with time.  It is a country known for its watches and its punctuality.  Time is important.  We need it to help us get through the day.   Yet time is most essentially a gift.  For “time is love.”

“Quickly, quickly, lest time be lost for lack of love,”

The others cried behind them.  “Let our zeal

for doing good make grace grow green again.”

– Dante, The Divine Comedy [Purgatorio XVIII:103-105]

Thoughts of our mortality don’t have to be morbid.  Thoughts of our need to repent or re-think our lives don’t have to be considered archaic or restraining to our perceived freedom.  I would say that they both offer us insight into how we can view our time as a gift while providing the opportunity to experience what we crave most, namely, to love and be loved.

As long as I believe that I’m ok and you’re ok, just because it makes me feel good, I run the risk of becoming indifferent and apathetic to the gift of time.  I make unimportant things in the big scheme of things ultimately important.  And most of all, I run the risk of believing that my ultimate good is anything that gives me pleasure while decreasing anything that gives me pain.  In other words, I risk assuming that the world revolves around me, therefore using the time I have to uphold this belief.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is a day that offers us a truth that is always present to us.  A truth that suggests, “It’s ok not to be ok.”  What a relief.  What a gift.  What a grace.

I am coming to see more and more that the misery that keeps me from experiencing the love that I crave is not found in the things that I hate.  Instead, what drives me into my self-inflicting torment are the things I love and how I love them.  And this always needs to be rethought, especially when I am reminded of my limited time here on earth.

I am becoming increasingly grateful for the gift of time…for it offers me a place to learn what it means to love and be loved.  In this dwelling place, overshadowed by the mercy of the cross, I smile while thinking, “It’s okay that I am not okay.”

By the sweat of your brow

you shall eat bread,

Until you return to the ground,

from which you were taken;

For you are dust,

and to dust you shall return.

-Gen 3:19