I enjoy daily devotional books. Over the years I have used them to focus my day and give me fodder for journaling. Since July I’ve been working with 365 Tao Daily Meditations by Deng Ming-Dao. I started this book when my younger sister, Aimee, passed away on June 19th of this year. She used these daily insights to help her through her cancer journey. My other remaining sisters and I decided to continue where Aimee left off, we each bought our own book and use these insights for ourselves.
I started the book with strong allegiance to the daily ritual and after a few months my piety waned. In this case it wasn’t the challenge of consistency that stopped my devotion but more my confusion of the timeline continuum.
I feel I have lost all sense of time since Aimee’s passing. I have to look at a calendar to know what month it is and the day. The weather should indicate time to me but it also has a mind of its own these last months. Right now the trees are ablaze in a myriad of autumn colors, it’s 84 degrees and I am wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Last weekend I was in long pants and a jacket honoring the much needed rain.
Summer has come and gone and somewhere I have only a vague recollection of it. Fall is leafing away quickly and I haven’t been able to grasp it. I am realizing, more than ever, the preciousness of time and how dynamic, fragile and infinite the matrix of our existence is to the over all consciousness.
Time has felt transitory, like morning dew that quickly evaporates with the warming sun. Or it’s elongated like golden honey dripping slow from a wooden spoon. And for me right now time seems to be a combination of these two extremes happening at the same time.
And I wonder… What is time trying to convey to me? I will ask, I will listen, and most of all I will refrain from judging myself. Because, after all, time is man made to ease confusion and give us structure.
I am curious, what is your relationship with time?
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There is only one universal goal: a gracious death with no regrets.
~365 Tao Daily Meditations page 240
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