There are caves in India where people go and sit in silence and isolation for fifteen years. They say that if they are successful, their consciousness will run out and they will find enlightenment. I first heard this story decades ago and have wondered, ‘What are you left with when your process is complete and you are successful? In what ways are you like an infant?’
Without a connection to the eternal or eternity, we are the age we live in, young, old, whatever it is.
The closest connection we have to anything that reaches beyond now (which includes the past and future), is our connection to the soul, or soul-filled experiences.
What does age mean on the backdrop of eternity? Is there a way to create and recreate a youthful expression in our lives?
Then, I heard about a man who lived in the desert. People would throw oranges to him, and he would laugh, catch the orange and throw it into his house. If you went into the house to get an orange, you would find oranges at the bottom of the pile to be just as fresh, or even fresher, than the oranges at the top.
What does youth mean fifty, five-hundred, five thousand years down the line? To eternity it all looks the same. It seems that if a person is looking for youth, a better way to go would be to look to eternity first, rather than to try and recapture it. Youth, to us, may be a series of misunderstood understandings. But, eternity understands the category of youth perfectly well.
Here is what came to me during this morning’s meditation as I was pondering forgiveness:
I breathe life into you every moment of every day,
From the first breathe to the last,
I will be there,
Know that your steps are ordered,
And you have been gifted in the privilege of taking those breaths,
Compassion never stops, even when understanding is off,
How can you know when you don’t know?
Forgiveness from God always rides on the wings of compassion.