THE ETERNAL NOW
by Forrest Church
February 1, 2004
Not all years are the same. Take this year, for instance. Being a leap year, 2004 has one more day than last year did or next year will. This is no small matter. Days are important. They are the building blocks with which we construct our lives. Any single day our life can change dramatically: a chance meeting, an unexpected triumph or tragedy, a resolution to change that somehow we manage to keep.
That said, I confess to sometimes getting my own days mixed up. In this month's bulletin, having noticed that February 29 falls on a Sunday, I promised to preach on the miracle of an extra day and what we might do with it. As soon as the bulletin went to press, I realized that I would be preaching in Milwaukee that Sunday. Imagine. I get a free day and what do I do with it—I go to Milwaukee! Don't get me wrong. I love Milwaukee. It's just not quite what I had in mind, when I said that we might dare to take our free day and turn it into anything we wish.
Having an extra day this year also takes a little of the pressure of January 1st. Having already made the mistake of sharing my 2004 New Years Resolution with the congregation, I want to thank all of you who have kindly asked me if I've made it to the gym yet. The answer to that question is "Soon." My bag is still packed. I'm ready to rumble. Inspired by the success of the Kerry campaign, I look at myself fiercely in the mirror every morning and growl, "Bring it on!"
The truth is, I wish I'd saved all the resolutions I've made on New Year's Day over the years. They'd constitute a small book by now, or a broken record, one I could take out whenever I needed further ammunition to prove to myself what a worm I am. I could call it The Case of the Missing Backbone.
The main problem with New Year's resolutions is that we tend to make too many at once. As in, "This year, starting now, I'm going to quit smoking, get up every morning at five and exercise, stop eating dessert, call my mother every other day, have only one and a half drinks before dinner (for my heart), and write a novel." The engine that powers our character often needs more than a tune-up. Sometimes it requires a complete overhaul. Having knocked down a few of my resolutions, even this can be accomplished over time I've discovered, but we're not going to find a new driver.
The truth is, for making resolutions, almost any day in the year is preferable to New Year's. Most days, we would be delighted to discover the resolve to accomplish even a sing character-improving act. But on New Year's Day our tendency is to wipe the slate clean, committing ourselves to an impossible set of demands, only to wake up in the same old bed of crumbs.
Fortunately, we get an extra day this year. This very month. The question is, what are we going to do with it?
Time is the most valuable thing we have to spend. Not that time is money. People say that, but time isn't really money. Time is spiritual capital. We either invest it or we squander it. The time we invest redeems itself.
You know what redemption is? Redemption is when you take a coupon to the store—worth a tenth of a cent they say—and receive something of tangible value in exchange. We redeem the time we invest in memory, knowledge, and skill. We redeem it in commitment to some cause greater than the advancement of our grubby little ego. We redeem it is service. We redeem it in love. Conversely, the time we waste we lose. "Lost Time," Benjamin Franklin said, "is never found again."
"Do you love life? " Franklin asked. "Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of." When we kill time, we kill life. Killing time is like passive suicide. We deaden ourselves, in order to get from one hour to the next without incident. But time is vengeful. When we waste time, time wastes us. When we kill time, time kills us. "As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
Ah, eternity! Eternity isn't an endless length of time; eternity is depth in time. The goal is to see "Eternity in an Hour," the mystic poet said, and he was right. Hidden by the veil of time, eternity is pregnant in every moment of our existence, here, everywhere and always: the eternal now.
It was Henry Thoreau said that we can't kill time without injuring eternity. As with many of the things he said, not only does this particular observation make us feel just slightly bad about ourselves, but also I'm not convinced he's right. My guess is, we are not powerful enough to injure eternity. And given our record, I'm grateful about that. Besides, even if you end up wasting it the way we do so many of our days, it wouldn't be right to feel bad about how you spend your free day. Remember, it's a free day, a bonus. If we waste it, we really don't lose anything. We're right where we were before, right where we always are. Besides, even wasted days are precious. Nonetheless, if we keep on the ready, eyes open, minds alert, we may yet chance upon some perfect way to seize it. And what a splendid thing that would be. Like returning home after a long search, only to find the treasure we were seeking planted in our very own backyard.
All of us have to fight against fatalism, a magical belief that once the die are cast we can't really do anything to change our fate. Resist this temptation. Don't throw your future into fate's basket. If the story of our life is turning out poorly, we don't have to despair. After all, we serve on the creative team that is writing it, with principal responsibility for character development. We also have more power to vitalize a dull tale or reverse our hero's fortunes than we may imagine. I have watched individuals turn their lives completely around during the course of a single life-wrenching, heart-stopping scene.
Tomorrow, as it happens, is Groundhog's day, our annual celebration of fatalism. To shake your own conviction that one day is not likely to be much different than the next, let me tell you a quick story about the liberation of Groundhog's Day.
One year when Punxsutawney Phil, the resident groundhog sage of Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania, returned to his burrow having gone out to look for his shadow for the umpteenth time, his wife told him firmly that she'd had it. From now on she would be the one to shoulder the burden of determining whether or not spring was coming early. "This job," she said, "is simply too important a matter to leave any longer to the judgment of my dogmatically minded husband."
"Look at it this way," she said. "A shadow is a fact. Either it's there or it's not. It if is there, the sun is shining; if not, the day is cloudy. So what does my high-brow know-it-all husband do with this evidence? He looks out upon a single day and projects a six-week outcome. Not only that, but his prediction flies in the face of what he sees. Through some perverse twist of convoluted logic, if the sun is shining, winter is far from over; if not, spring is in the air.
"I'm not going to ruin my life anymore on the basis of one day's experience, especially one from which illogical conclusions are drawn," she said. "The consequences for this kind of purblind fatalism are too dire. I can't count the number of times the two of us have spent six ridiculous weeks walking through the snow without our coats on, or boarding ourselves up in our hole while the sun, warm and wonderful, beat down upon the earth. And all because my idiot husband believes in somebody else's idiot theory."
You will have discovered by now that Punxsutawney Phyllis is a Unitarian, unlike her Calvinistic husband. She awakens to a new day every morning, one filled with opportunity, ours again—no matter what may have happened yesterday—to seize and script as we will. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "the days are Gods." But they only lord over us, when we refuse to honor them.
So lets take a second look at that extra day we get to play with this February. As I wrote in my minister's letter this month, my suggestion is this. Don't let it slip by unnoticed. Treat it like a free day, one you can turn into anything you wish. Play a spiritual game with it. Discover how precious one extra dividend of time can really be, if you pay it your full attention.
To make the most of this opportunity, don't get too caught up with February 29th in particular. Look at it this way: we get one extra day this February; so choose any one of them as your personal bonus day. Then do something outrageous with it, something you wouldn't think of doing with one of your regular issue of days.
Skip work. Go to a nearby beach (you'll be the only person there). Or become a tourist. Buy a Fodors Guide for New York City. Visit Ellis Island, the top of the Empire State Building, Nathan's Hot Dog Stand, and the Cloisters—all in one day. Or stay in bed and read your favorite book again. Or make a list of all the friends you've fallen out of touch with and give them each a call. Do something with this free day that you wouldn't otherwise have time for.
That is my charge to you this morning. It's February 1st. The entire month is ahead of us. So why not plan for the extra day we get this month right now? This doesn't necessarily mean looking for a new, more fertile field, but rather tilling the one we've got; sowing a few seeds here or there. Feeling what its like to have our feet on the ground and our eyes on the horizon. Stopping. Simply being. Being present. Opening the curtain and unveiling the Eternal Now.
One final thought. The present is not only a dimension of time—it is also a gift. Being present is to receive the present. Each moment we live is the one moment we are given to redeem, for the past is over and the future remains uncertain. When we unwrap the present, we enter a world that is completely ours. We receive the gift of life.
It's like preparing for a miracle.
Miracles happen, you know. Every day. But that's just it—this year isn't really all that different from any other. After all, what is one more day, when compared with the improbable miracle of any day at all? Still, an extra day is nothing to sniff at. It may even help us to make better use of the other days we are given to rejoice and be glad in! Besides, in the only lottery that counts, it's one more opportunity to draw the winning number. This happens every time we awaken to discover how miraculous a day can be.
They don't seem that way sometimes. We tend to take our days for granted. We accept them as a given, rather than receiving them as a gift. Or we begrudge them. We can always find some reason to indict our days. Others disappoint us. We break our resolutions. We make a mess of things. Perhaps, if we began this very day by accepting ourselves and forgiving others, needed changes might come more easily. It certainly couldn't hurt, even if it does turn out that we have six weeks more of winter to look forward to.
Let me leave you with one closing thought. We might be wise—on our free day or any other for that matter—to pause for one eternal moment and remember something we keep trying to forget. One day, not unlike this one, our gift of days will be taken from us. But that's okay too. All our days are free days, every one a bonus. Every one a miracle.