Blip in Time
“Heartbreaks,
disappointments, and even our own weaknesses can serve as stepping
stones to the second half of life transformation. Failings are the
foundation for growth. Those who have fallen, failed, or 'gone down'
are the only ones who understand 'up.'”
Richard
Rohr
In Spirituality Group on
Wednesday night, we had a big “debate” about the nature of God.
Is God only love, does God encompass darkness as well as light, and
so forth and so on. Somewhere in the midst of all that discussion,
Christine, who is usually very quiet, asked this simple question:
“Aren't we just a blip in time?” Later in the week, based upon
something all together different, my friend, Susan, sent me an
excerpt from Carl Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot. The pale blue
dot he referenced was a photo of Earth taken by Voyager 1 from 4
billion miles away. In the photo, there is a streak of rainbow color
that is a sunbeam, and in the middle of it, almost invisible, is our
pale blue planet. Part of the quote that follows the photo is this:
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we
have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this
point of pale light.” (Sagan) I have been letting both those
messages settle into my bones this week.
One human lifetime is but
a blip in time, and almost as infinitesimal as that vague blue dot in the
cosmos. Yet, we hang so much importance on it; we take such extreme
measures to be smart, be right, be impressive, never fail, never make
mistakes, and most of all—to be The Best. Priest, Richard Rohr, says: “It's a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own
smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up
to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect.” We can relax. We
don't have to prove our brilliance or our indispensability to
ourselves or anyone else. We can appreciate opportunities to grow
through our mistakes. After all, we are just a blip in time!
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment