The Timeless Now

Last summer, I had a garden on my husband's property in Pennsylvania. I had tended that garden with a great deal of care and hard work for four years. I had created a large bed of perennial strawberries and last June I had a great crop of them.

I went out every morning before the heat of the day came in. I harvested all the ripe berries each morning and brought them into the house. I sat at my small table to go through them carefully. They were like sweet summer jewels to me.

Some were perfect. Some were a bit marred by being overripe on one side, or having touched the ground. Some were overripe, but still usable; the long hot sunny days brought them to ripeness so quickly. The ones which were perfect, I placed in a white bowl for my husband and I to eat that day. They were delicious organically grown strawberries. The ones which were marred I placed in a plastic container with a lid and froze; I would make strawberry compote with them on a cooler morning and store the preserves in sterilized mason jars to be used at a later time. Every morning, for many days, I added berries to the plastic container. Eventually I had enough of them to make a strawberry compote.

As I sat at the table, my hands sticky with berry juice and the delicious smell of them in my nose, I suddenly was outside of time, opening a jar of compote in the icy white of January, spreading the sweet compote onto a thick slice of bread. I knew, I did not imagine or assume. I knew that I would delve into the experience of enjoying the strawberry compote, that it would bring me back in time into the dew wet garden and the stretch and work of berry picking. It was a moment in the timeless Now, a moment outside of linear time.

Recently, I opened a jar of strawberry compote. I had brought them all with me when I came here last July. I had protected it from breakage and from extremes of heat and cold. I had protected it from the light, for fruit preserves should be stored in a dark place. I had stored the jars of strawberry compote away in my new home. When I opened the jar, I suddenly was back at the table, carefully selecting berries to go into the white bowl to be eaten that day, or into the plastic container to be made into preserves. Suddenly, my hands were sticky with berry juice and my table was strewn with bright red fruit. I tasted again the dawn coolness and the dew-wet grass under my bare feet. I was in the timeless Now, and knew again, without a shadow of a doubt, the bounty of the harvest.

I don't know if I have managed to convey to you what I mean to convey. The Lu who sat at the table with the berries and the Lu who opened the jar and smelled the compote were in the same moment in the timeless Now. They connected. In June, I was the Lu in January, and in January I was the Lu in June.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I realized that there have been other such moments, moments when I somehow knew that later I would be in that moment again and when later came, sure enough, there I was.

It is the timeless Now that touches other moments in linear time, because in reality, all moments touch one another, just as all beings touch one another.

My reason for writing of this today is to encourage you to be aware of these moments outside of linear time, moments that somehow supersede linear time. They will come to you when you are wholly in the Now, when you are immersed in the experience of the Now moment, when you are fully appreciative of what is present in that moment with you. I don't think it is necessary that something be physically preserved, as the fruit compote was preserved. I think that just gave me a good example of these kinds of moments to write about. They happen whether there is a preserved object or not, but it might be easier to recognize them when something tangible is created and preserved.

I believe that we are going to see more and more of these moments outside of linear time, touching the timeless Now. I believe that as we become more and more whole in the Now, these ALL-That-Is moments will become more known to us.

I call them ALL-That-Is moments, because when I was sitting at that table I was wholly in the ALLness of the ALL-That-Is, and that is what I touched upon when I saw the future and that is what I touched upon the other day when I saw the past. The link between the moment in June and the moment in January was a timeless moment in the ALL-That-Is.

Don't try to wrap your brain around it. I can't. Just feel it. It's mysteriously wonderful and sort of golden. It's beyond our minds, yet a great gift to our divine knowing.

And if any of you would like to know more about making strawberry compote, just let me know.