Read "Who was that woman?" at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/
MP
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Suppressing the terrible truth
Read my latest blog "More on Canadian late term abortions: Suppressing the terible truth."
MP
Thursday, August 21, 2008
"My role in long ago abortion still haunts"
Read "My role in long ago abortion still haunts me" at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/
Mark Pickuo
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Lessons of Time
The house was absolutely still except for the steady ticking of the alarm clock on the night-table beside my bed. Nothing stirred in the darkness -- nothing, that is, but the silent and unsettling sizzle-tingle sensation in my legs. It was a dreaded sensation I have become familiar with throughout more than two decades of multiple sclerosis (MS). The MS was churning up something inside me and my thighs were protesting. I had been awake for hours because of it, passing the time staring through the darkness at the ceiling or looking out my bedroom window into the black moonless sky. Dawn was approaching.
Now and then
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the black sky began to lighten. My bedroom window was slightly open so I could hear birds begin to stir in the trees that surround my little house. At some moment or other, dawn blossomed and night was gone: today became yesterday, now became then. It was all so very poignant. My understanding of the passage of time moved from the head to the soul. My inmost eyes seemed to catch a fleeting glimpse of something akin to eternity -- then it vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Saint Augustine’s Confessions, he observed:
“In your transcendent present state of eternity, you [God] are before all past time and after all future time, since the future is still to come and when it comes it will be past, but you are ever the same, and ‘your years wither not.’ Your years neither come nor go; but ours do come and go, so that all may file by.”
Later Augustine said,
“When a history of the past is truly related, the memory does not bring back the events themselves, which have gone out of existence, but the words describing them – and these words were taken from the senses as the events left on them a print of their passage.”
Tenses of time
There are only three tenses: past, present and future. Only the present actually exists. The past is only remembered, the future is anticipated: the present is all we actually experience as each fleeting second passes by and then disappears into memory.
This is why time can break the human heart. Days slip by which turn into weeks and then months. One morning a mother notices that her baby has become a toddler, or the toddler becomes a little boy, a schoolboy, and so forth. Seasons pass.
That same son will one day look at his mother with the stunning revelation that old age crept up on his mother, and his heart will break. He’ll wonder, “When did this happen?” It happened dawn by dawn.
Again, Saint Augustine observed,
“Perhaps we can say that there are three tenses, but that they are the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future. This would correspond, in some sense, with a triad I find in the soul and nowhere else, where the past is present to memory, the present is present to observation, and the future is present to anticipation.”
True, but I find heartbreak in this too. I miss the sweet past and those who peopled it (so many of them are gone). The present that I observe is filled with joy as I watch my grandchildren grow a
nd develop, dawn to dawn. Yet there is an unsettling pall of physical degeneration that hangs over the present and saddens me. None of them will ever know me swimming, or rough-housing. Their memories of me will always be sitting on the sidelines observing them. My soul’s present of future anticipation skips what likely awaits me in this world – I don’t dare contemplate it – it jumps to the joyous future in the next world.
If God exists outside of time, as Saint Augustine said, then death must remove us from its constraints too. And if this is true then the proclamation “life everlasting”, as the Apostles’ Creed says, takes on a new context. The heartbreak of time, aging, and death will hold no grip on us because time will hold no grip on us.
A great teacher
It’s impossible for me to imagine a world without time. That is all I know. Time is a great teacher. Time has paradoxically been the source of great joy and heartache in my life. The greatest lesson time has taught me is not to hold on to joy or sorrow. It is pointless because joy (at least joy of this world) slips away like sand falling between my fingers. Holding on to sorrow is a sin against hope.
What is my hope? To be with Jesus. He is the light of the world. In Him there are no dawns or dusks – just the continuous full light of the Son.
Mark Pickup
Now and then
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the black sky began to lighten. My bedroom window was slightly open so I could hear birds begin to stir in the trees that surround my little house. At some moment or other, dawn blossomed and night was gone: today became yesterday, now became then. It was all so very poignant. My understanding of the passage of time moved from the head to the soul. My inmost eyes seemed to catch a fleeting glimpse of something akin to eternity -- then it vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Saint Augustine’s Confessions, he observed:“In your transcendent present state of eternity, you [God] are before all past time and after all future time, since the future is still to come and when it comes it will be past, but you are ever the same, and ‘your years wither not.’ Your years neither come nor go; but ours do come and go, so that all may file by.”
Later Augustine said,
“When a history of the past is truly related, the memory does not bring back the events themselves, which have gone out of existence, but the words describing them – and these words were taken from the senses as the events left on them a print of their passage.”
Tenses of time
There are only three tenses: past, present and future. Only the present actually exists. The past is only remembered, the future is anticipated: the present is all we actually experience as each fleeting second passes by and then disappears into memory.
This is why time can break the human heart. Days slip by which turn into weeks and then months. One morning a mother notices that her baby has become a toddler, or the toddler becomes a little boy, a schoolboy, and so forth. Seasons pass.
That same son will one day look at his mother with the stunning revelation that old age crept up on his mother, and his heart will break. He’ll wonder, “When did this happen?” It happened dawn by dawn.
Again, Saint Augustine observed,
“Perhaps we can say that there are three tenses, but that they are the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future. This would correspond, in some sense, with a triad I find in the soul and nowhere else, where the past is present to memory, the present is present to observation, and the future is present to anticipation.”
True, but I find heartbreak in this too. I miss the sweet past and those who peopled it (so many of them are gone). The present that I observe is filled with joy as I watch my grandchildren grow a
nd develop, dawn to dawn. Yet there is an unsettling pall of physical degeneration that hangs over the present and saddens me. None of them will ever know me swimming, or rough-housing. Their memories of me will always be sitting on the sidelines observing them. My soul’s present of future anticipation skips what likely awaits me in this world – I don’t dare contemplate it – it jumps to the joyous future in the next world.If God exists outside of time, as Saint Augustine said, then death must remove us from its constraints too. And if this is true then the proclamation “life everlasting”, as the Apostles’ Creed says, takes on a new context. The heartbreak of time, aging, and death will hold no grip on us because time will hold no grip on us.
A great teacherIt’s impossible for me to imagine a world without time. That is all I know. Time is a great teacher. Time has paradoxically been the source of great joy and heartache in my life. The greatest lesson time has taught me is not to hold on to joy or sorrow. It is pointless because joy (at least joy of this world) slips away like sand falling between my fingers. Holding on to sorrow is a sin against hope.
What is my hope? To be with Jesus. He is the light of the world. In Him there are no dawns or dusks – just the continuous full light of the Son.
Mark Pickup
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