Dear Friends ~ 

All around us seasonal changes are beginning to mark the passage of time and I wonder--have the efficiencies of technology and the urgencies of modern culture's pace changed our relationship with time itself? I recently participated in a workshop on nature drawing. With naught but a couple of charcoal pencils and a sketchbook, I sat down in the dewy morning grass to look at a mushroom. Twenty minutes passed as we encountered each other. The feathery white fringe encircling its narrow dome caught minuscule pearls of dew. Peering under its cap, I discovered a delicate collar necklace draped at an angle around the top of its pristine silk-smooth stalk. Without disturbing this elegantly turbaned upright specimen, I peered inside another fallen-over comrade to discover a whole ream of filmy, tissue-thin "pages" hidden within its cap. Only later did I begin to wonder if these caps were already fully formed to remain tall narrow parabolas or whether they were just waiting to open like a parasol being raised. Had I opted for the instant gratification of a photograph, the phone would hold an image but would I have spent time noticing how the gills inside morphed from charcoal grey to salmon to ecru? Would I have left any space for wondering how this moment fit into before and after? Or would this little wonder have flitted in and out of memory in a careless heartbeat?

It seems all too easy for modern life to become one continuous rush tainted with frustration and a feeling that there is never enough time to do anything with care and sensitivity. So it is a very useful practice just to take one's time. The truth is that if we can take pleasure in what we do and be mindful, we will find we have more time. Our relationship with time itself can change. Time becomes full of life rather than second by second stealing our life away.

~ from Reflections on Everyday Life by Paramananda

Return a culture to a sense of sacred time
and you will find that you can live
in a world that renews itself.

~ David La Chapelle. Read More: LaChapelle: Heaven to Hell

Early morning dew
sparkling for a span of time
silently absorbed.

~ Ann M. LaVallee

Have you also learned that secret from the river -- that there is no such thing as time? ... the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the water-fall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and ... the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

~ from Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Don't worry.
How many roads did Saint Augustine follow
before he became Saint Augustine?

~ "Don't Worry" by Mary Oliver. Read more: Felicity: Poems by Mary Oliver

Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. Why? Because it is all we ever have.

~ Pema Chödrön. Read more: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön

When you center the inner realities, your sense of time, depth, and truth changes... Don't let the shallowness and speed of daily life cheapen your inner wisdom.

~ Penney Pierce. Read more: Leap of Perception: The Transforming Power of Your Attention by Penney Peirce

My name is I AM...
When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets,
it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WAS.
When you live in the future with its problems and fears,
it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WILL BE.
When you live in this moment, it is not hard. I am here.
My name is I AM.

~ Helen Mallicoat. Read More: Listen for the Lord by Helen Mallicoat

When, living in the present in profound attentiveness, we experience " timeless moments" of radical present and Presence, we come very near to God.

~ from To Everything a Season: A Spirituality of Time by Bonnie Thurston

God requires us to be oriented from moment to moment to what is in the timeless, and not to be stuck with our thoughts and fantasies of blaming and self-pity and the belief that the past is responsible for our present problems. What is needed is to understand life in the dimension of the timeless, where everything becomes meaningful and self-revealing.

~ from Self-Transcendence by Thomas Hora

The highest point of life may be to live in a state of pure flow, a "now-state" without past or future, in which prediction and control are not factors-a state of continual, instant-by-instant adaption to the unknown.

~ Joseph Chilton Pearce. Read More: The Heart-Mind Matrix: How the Heart Can Teach the Mind New Ways to Think by Joseph Chilton Pearce

For us, there is not just this world, there's also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness.

~ Joy Harjo. Read More: Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

~ Sarah Dessen. Read More: The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

We find our own origins in the ancient arts. Loss of the ancient means loss of the realization of the timeless in the present time, whenever an old tree is cut, whenever an old landmark is razed. When the place of one's personal roots are destroyed the roots of the individual wither.

~ from A Zen Wave by Robert Aitken

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord. There is none to count thy minutes. Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait... At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; but I find that yet there is time.

~ from "Endless Time" by Rabindranath Tagore. Read More: The Essential Tagore

"How do I treat the sacramental gift of time?"

~ K. J. Ingram

As spring and summer follow
the autumn and winter,
so our lives have their seasons.
Help us to live in the eternal moment,
awaiting your perfect timing
in all things.

~ from Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill

Ancient Wisdom for Troubled Times: In the Presence of the Old Ones with Jim Hall and Cheryl Hellner.  September 15-17, 2017

Or schedule your own Personal Retreat. Friends of Silence is devoted to nurturing those who reverence silence, prayer, contemplation, the Divine Guest, and the Oneness of all creation. Personal retreat can be a wonderful discipline for those seeking the life-giving empowerment that derives from the Silence. We have partnered with Still Point Mountain Retreat to be able to offer space for personal retreat for our members, whether you come as an individual, couple, family, or small group. We also manage and offer River House. The wilderness setting of both these retreat spaces provides the quiet and solitude necessary for the ideal personal retreat experience.

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