Expressing Peace. Doing Time. 74.
Doing Time
We should all be doing time.
I’m not saying we should be imprisoned, although many of our perceptions of time are sort of imprisoning. We make time, take time, steal time, save time, spend time, waste time — all of which create a bit of guilt by which we let time (there’s never enough!) imprison us.
Instead of those perceptions, we should do time. As in doing the bosa nova or the tango. Too often we take time to mean the future, the uncertain yet desired destination to which we are hurrying. Not as often but still perhaps too often, time means the past from which we drag our heals that we may not leave it.
I imagine Alan Watts included “living” as a category of art when he said, “For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing. No rush. No dawdle. Just the sense of flowing with the course of events in the same way that you dance to music, neither trying to outpace t nor lagging behind. Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.”
When we live for any time other than now, time controls. Time does us. That translates into hurry-scurry to fulfill our obligations and into distraction from the beauty of daily living. I share Maria Popova‘s worry about “showing up for our obligations but being absent from ourselves, mistaking the doing for the being.”
For thoughts about staying in the present, you may want to click back to any of these Expressing Peace posts: #70, #66, #62, #45, #35, #21. Or plenty of others.
GOD Who Frees Us to Be
and not to do
and not to race against time
or strive to save time
or struggle to beat time.
The joy of each breath
and the peace of feeling each breath fully
lets us out of time.
The thrill from stillness in the moment
as it happens
that it happens
and is ours to know.
The grace of leading the dance
jiving to the beat of what is now
and now and now and now.
We can deny that we are done by time.
We can give thanks that we do time
as we will, true to our being.
And so it is. Amen. Amen.
Enjoy Peace. Express Peace.
In: Inner Peace, Joy, Music, Peace, Peacefulness, Prayer, Praying · Tagged with: God, Joy, Peace, praying, spiritual simplicity
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