ShareThisThere is a sense of timelessness about the Friends Meeting House off Route One in Alexandria, just down the road from George Washington's Mount Vernon. The simple frame dwelling has stood on the same property for over a century and a half. Old photographs show the building to be unchanged since passing Union soldiers paused to carve the names of wives and sweethearts on the door frames.Within the meetinghouse, the only evidence of time passing is an old regulator clock that ticks with every transit of its pendulum. It is the only sound in the great open room where Quakers worship in total silence, many with eyes closed against a world they believe moves too swiftly and inconclusively. For an hour every Sunday morning, some hundred Friends seek a sense of permanence and satisfaction in the stillness. Here gathered are lawyers and journalists, lobbyists and federal staffers recuperating from the rat race in Washington.Few find meditation to be easy, but they persist week after week.There would be nothing pernicious about the passing of time if people possessed the knack of living fully in the present moment instead of dwelling on past regrets and future fears. Poets seek to freeze the riches of the present in their verse. "Stay," they plead against time, "you are so lovely!" Only malcontents welcome the passing of time, hoping something better will come along later. Their hope is seldom rewarded. It is better to be absorbed in the present moment, which offers a glimpse of eternity, which is not an endless succession of time, but a perfect (begin ital) now (end ital).In popular estimation, religious faith views eternity as rest from time and change, regret and anxiety. But it is more than mere respite; it is fulfillment. "Be still and know that I am God," the psalmist preached. The poet T.S. Eliot prayed, "Teach us to care, and not to care; teach us to sit still."Old men tend to repeat themselves. Sure enough, in each of my 13 books on faith and confidence I have echoed the mantra: "Live in the present moment." It came as a pleasant surprise when Rosie Boycott picked up on the theme recently in The Sunday Times of London. She chided herself for her misuse of the present moment: "I wasn't enjoying the moment because I kept thinking of ways I could improve it."Boycott asked other writers for counsel on living fully in the present. The author Joyce Grenfell advised her: "There's no such thing as time, only this very minute, and I'm in it. Thank the Lord."Tom Hodgkinson advises turning off all our electronic gadgets that communicate with news and people, take a stroll in the park, hide your watch and "hang out with beings who have not transformed themselves into harbors of worry and regret -- and that means small children and animals."Time, Herbert Spenser lamented, is something most people try to kill, noting wryly that time ends in killing them. Whereas learning to savor the present moment ensures always being alive.(David Yount's "Growing in Faith: A Guide for the Reluctant Christian" (Seabury) is now available in an updated paperback edition. He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)
No better time than the present
Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 16:30
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
