I Will Use My Time
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“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
-Jack London
I turn 52 this year. The time ahead is now shorter than the time behind, and I feel it. Which means it is past time to use my days for what matters, for who matters. For me, that’s more poetry, more travel, more time with the ones I love, and more meditative silence to remind me what is real and what is not.
What about you?
No matter your age or stage, is this the life you imagined? What led you here and what is preventing you from becoming the person you were born to be?
In her poem The Summer Day, Mary Oliver asks:
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
As we enter the gift of a new year, it’s the perfect time to pause and reflect on how you are spending all these little clumps of moments that together form the enormity of your life. What can you eliminate? What do you need more of and where will you be next year at this time?
Gary Alan Taylor
The Sophia Society & Holy Heretics Podcast
The end goal of Christianity isn’t to sin less, it is to become just like Jesus. Theosis or deification is the transformative path we are asked to walk, its aim is nothing less that complete union with God.