Time does not pass; the present
holds steady, and we pass through it.
We do not spend our days; we accrue them.
Our lives are not linear, like a string,
but cumulative, like rings of a tree.
All the memories,
the choices and the unchosen,
feasts and wounds, dry years and wet,
are the rings that make up the tree.
The little boy alone on the hillside is still in there,
the man weeping on the floor, the man bowing,
the eve of one day and the day after,
all I have received and given,
all of it is God growing in me,
none of it would I cut away,
each gift and loss, each success and failure
another ring
as today I give thanks and count one more
that firms me and forms me as I stand
in this moment
and hold new leaves up to the sun.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
―June 14, 2019