“There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it.
There is only an eternally new now that builds
and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws."
(Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, novelist and dramatist.)
The span between regret and redemption is measured by our ability to love and forgive; ourselves and others. Living in regret vexes the spirit and impedes time as it pushes us past the past and our inability to change it.
There are moments that I relive with great personal satisfaction and others that I would redo if only for the sake of making right a perceived wrong. If only the realm of possibility would allow such opportunities. However, I have learned that parking in the past, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant, honorable or dishonorable the intention, is a blinding undertaking, one that reduces the spectacle of our already limited vision to the peripheral.
I am content to leave the reliving, redoing and retelling to my poems and novels. In doing so, any guilty parties, my co-conspirators and I can be cleverly disguised and my ego, along with all of its illusions of grandeur and perception of disenchantment, remains in its proper place, second only to the reality of the present.
The redemption of time is not an exercise for making up for time’s passing. It is an act of surrender to and an exchange of what our mind chronicles as history. It is an inheritance of the revealing light of perpetuity.
We cannot make-up for lost time, try as we may. What we can and must do is recognize the splendor of the present. It may not be what we planned or envisioned, but it is the offering at hand. And we must be its excellent and eternal steward.
Selah,
Camille
