Taking time

We are in danger of becoming like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: ‘I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. No time to say “Hello – Goodbye!”’ We find ourselves constantly rushing places, caught up in a whirl of activity, afraid to stand still for a moment … until one day we wake up and find that time has run out like sand through an hourglass. Then, like Richard II, we realise, ‘I wasted Time and now doth Time waste me.’ Suddenly, with a shock, we realise our time is up.  It is because we don’t take time that repeatedly we fail to heed the wisdom that is in our bodies, in our dreams and intuitions. Yet once we do begin to listen then we realise, as in the words of the famous passages from Ecclesiastes, that ‘For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under the sun.’

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4 thoughts on “Taking time”

  1. The Pandemic forced people into a very different relationship with time and being with self and others. Perhaps distilling the essence of what in our real time is of most truly valuable. Let us carry the learning from this Global upheaval as the machines of distraction begin to reve up and roar again. Be still and know…

  2. So much wider than the foolish post today from a certain monastery website, telling us covid is the result of our straying far from God!!

  3. Thank you, James, for your wise counsel.
    In the words of an African prayer:
    ‘Slow me down, Lord, I’m going too fast,
    I can’t see my brother when he’s walking past,
    I miss a lot of good things day by day,
    I don’t know a blessing when it comes my way.’

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