And Time Is

As an immature fan of science fiction, I loved stories about time travel. To read of adventurers and innocents traveling through time and creating paradoxes was exhilarating. I had never assumed a beginning or an end of time but I also knew that time, being linear, had bounds and could be measured.

As a grade school student, I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle and began to sense that time was made of space and matter. Simply put, the author defined time as a line or a thread that could be folded in the middle to bring the beginning to the end. Yet, even at the age of ten, I recognized the space traversed in that motion and wondered how it remained apart from time and how was it measured? What was it for? It was a puzzle for a later time.

As a teenager, I was excited to read the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. To me the underlying story was that of progression on individuals from one plane of existence, or time, to another. Time was no longer linear. It was comprised of space and matter.

It was the first time an author had more acceptably defined time, eternity and progression for me. I was enthralled. From the perspective of these and many other writers I began to recognize that my time is not limited but merely measurable because I am temporarily here on this planet. My experience here is bounded by a beginning and an end. It is only the experience that has bounds set in time.

As an adult, I continued to feel conspicuously out of place and trapped in a temporary existence. The words of William Wordsworth struck a cord deep in primal memory in his Ode "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". He recognized and described our arrival on earth as "trailing clouds of glory do we come; from God, who is our home." I sensed his understanding of travel from one time to another; from one existence to the next.

After years of aging I have come to recognize this life as a time for trial, testing and progression. I have imaginations and insights of who I was before my time yet I have no memory. I have promise, faith and hope of who I become beyond my time yet I have no proof. What I have is the use of my time; an understanding that it has bounds; and,

that there is More.

Time

Determination sets the scale
Against choice and fight well spent;
And time is but a snapshot,
When spirits halt for measurement.

Life and breath weigh balanced
Against faith and worth and bent;
And time is born in finite space
Where souls are marked for measurement.

Eternity is held at bay
Against birth and life and death
And time is but a concept
Where mankind stands for measurement.