An Infinite Moment

The beginning of a new year brings to mind priorities.

Beginnings remind us of endings and in so doing allow us to realise more vividly than usual that every moment is infinitely precious.

"Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations."

(Khalil Gibran)

A friend of mine was reading a book of mathematics and came across an interesting idea based on Zeno's paradoxes:

It was an idea that proposed that infinity can be held within a moment.

For example, if you turn a light on for two minutes, then turn it off for one minute, turn it on for 30 seconds then turn it off for 15, each time halving the time as you turn it on and off, when does the time end? Does the light flicker on and off infinitly?

If every moment springs from an eternal source every moment surley contains the properties of eternity.

There is the potential to realise eternity in reflections of beauty, light, joy, grace and love in the infinite moments of everyday life.

And each thought, action, desire and intention whether positive or negative resonates beyond itself in someway. Impacting others and ourselves beyond our realisation.

Time is not simply a two dimensional, linear measurement of space. It has a volume and depth which touches beyond the markings that seperate days from nights and hour's from years.

So when my day begins, and the first moments of my waking, open my eyes. I begin!

I have the chance to begin again with every breath I take.

"I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name and where I shall be born again with a new face and untried heart. "

(Colette)

And with that thought there lies another question. Before I go to sleep at night what is left? What might be drawn from the long shadows of another day done?

How many extraneous worries, doubts, fears and barriers may I have to subtract before finding what was truly important in that day. What was truly infinite in the hours and moments it contained.

What part of me is the eternal part?

Do I keep that part of my consciousness roused from moment to moment? Is it awake?

Is it the crest of the wave which brings me into shore, or does it sink to the bottom of my to-do' list and the day's dirty laundry?

Is the mirror which reflects only light the first thing I clean and wipe the dust off before I start my day or do my housework and chores come first?

Maybe I have to do some subtracting.

Peel back the layers.

Become hollow like the reed.

"There is an emptiness like the hollow of a reed, the narrow riftless emptiness which can only have one destiny: to receive the piper's breath and to utter the song that is in his heart.."

"And take repose, while music infinite
Is silence in your heart; and laid on it
Your reed is mute. "

( Caryll Houselander)

Every fragment of self, every moment of time a whole entity within itself containing the truth and the light of all.

From the smallest particle of dust to the enormity of a supernova. All are marked with the fingerprints of their creator. All hold the secrets of his love. Like the folded petals of a rose, cupped hands recieving the host, hollowed rocks that time erodes.

"10He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe."

(Ephesians 10 )

The Whole measure is meant for us. Not small portions. No fragments of self, No allotments of life.

To become whole, we are asked to give all.

"How fortunate are you and I,
whose home is timelessness: we who have wandered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day (or maybe even less)."

ee cummings

A related link from Holy Experience

kairos andchronos