Time After Time

Psalm 103.8 -9

Our days are but as grass

We flourish as a flower of the field

For as soon as the wind goes over it, it is gone

And its place shall know it no more

The aching beauty of these words has always spoken to me, perhaps most hauntingly at this time of year as the earth’s richness fades and falls. I am torn between rejoicing in the colours, the textures, the scents, the richness and being lost in the desolation of death and decay.  Little wonder that at this time of year we think of our dead, we light fires to defy the darkness, we flirt with ideas of the darker side of spirit worlds, we are borne up by ideas of sainthood, of goodness, truth and beauty reigning over all. Darkness and death can be fearful things.  We seek out rituals and images to express our fears and to give us hope.  We draw on our understanding that winter, so far from being a dead time, is when nature is recouping her forces and readying herself for a new beginning.  We wait for Spring when it all begins again. 

As I age, I know more intensely the truth the psalmist speaks; that our lives are so brief. I know I have already lived my span, but it seems impossibly quick.   That childlike sense of time stretching ahead, of the endless length of summer days, of the impossibility of its ever being Christmas has long given way to the sensation of days disappearing into weeks and can it really be November?   Youthful confidence in one’s strength and resilience gives way to an increasing sense of the fragility of life.  But maybe with the increasing awareness of mortality comes an increased sense of gratitude for life.  To live out our days in their fullness, to flourish as a flower of the field, knowing that soon our place shall know us no more.  This is such a challenging idea: that except for a very few individuals we come and we go and are remembered for a while if we have had the good fortune to be loved. And yet, we were known to God before our time and will be known by him long after our presence has ceased to be remembered here.

Much to my children’s amusement, I have always loved graveyards, places where it is so clear that we come and we go, but more importantly, where it is so easy to trace that we are all part of a flow of history.  We have our own place in this moment of present time on earth that is given to us, to do with as best we may, and then we become part of the greater time that is all past and all future and all beyond time. In this church we have in our physical surroundings the constant reminder of the privilege of being part of centuries of prayer, a continuous stream of striving to understand and appropriate the sacred mystery of it all.  For me, that is the place I find the dead, swept up in the eternal love of God, because God is love and love never ends. 

by Patricia O'Neill