Letters to Tom — Time

Dear Tom:

You say in your comment to my letter regarding sackcloth and ashes :

“But he also pointed out that tithing can also be 10% of one’s time. That amounts, of course, to 2.4 hours a day, which can be spent in a variety of spiritual practices – prayer, meditation, study, etc. But he also pointed out that holding a conscious intention that all I do and say during the day will be spiritual practice (e.g. love-based, deep respect, thankfulness, conscious of spirit, etc.)… that makes the 10% calculation seem not so intimidating.”

Time, our fourth dimension, is the mystery of our time. (My apologies Suzy, really bad pun.) For example, we read that the Hubble Telescope is photographing images of the Universe at the time of creation, billions of years ago. Now that is hard for a non-scientific mind to wrap his arms around.  I read recently that “Time is an earthly thing, … for us its a grip of iron.” That mostly what we feel is a bondage to time, not a freedom from it. Another author offers a similar thought to yours asking, “what if today you honored equally all moments of the day…. What if you saw every minute of your day as a tiny offering of yourself to God.” That could be one heck of a lenten discipline.

Your Sufis have developed a metaphysics of time and fate dramatically different from the ordinary, linear perception of time. I am fascinated  by how they describe that moment when the past overlaps the future . They use the physicist David Bohm’s metaphor of the ocean and the wave, explaining that a wave of the sea rises, then falls back into its depths; each new wave, however is a fresh expression of the sea while interspersed with elements of the previous wave. But my fascination may just be a ploy of mine to return to the beach for further “study.”

Time is worthy of our meditations and thoughts. So I leave each to their own thoughts on time before the fixed 40 days is so soon upon us. But here is a question? Leanord Euhler wrote “The pull of the future, is stronger than the push of the past.” What in your future is pulling you now, and what push must it overcome?

Your Friend, Webb

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About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.