To Find Eternity In A Recycling Bin
As I lifted the lid of the big bin behind the garage and dumped in the week’s recycling, four words came back to me. I had read them just this morning: “Eternity is right now.” The rattling and clattering of the falling bottles and cans startled me, and, unaccountably, I thought, Right now? Right while I dump the recycling? This is eternity?
I’m eternally skeptical because I was raised to believe that eternity comes afterwards. After you are born and play hide-and-seek and grow up and graduate and go out to set the world on its ear and get married and go on vacations and raise your children and take care of your mother and bury your father and get cancer and nearly die and then retire and go for long walks by the river and take that trip to Iceland and finally succumb. That’s when eternity comes. Later. Afterwards.
But eternity doesn’t come after anything, because it’s not just time that goes on forever, world without end. Eternity is timelessness. It’s being in a state where there is no past and no future, only now. Yet even while we live in the realm of time, we often experience this timelessness. You’re with someone you love dearly, and for hours you forget to be resentful of what happened twenty years ago, or to be worried about what will happen tomorrow. This is eternity.
Or just this—you can be deeply anxious or depressed, and you go to a movie that completely captivates your imagination, and when you emerge from the dark theatre you realize you haven’t thought about your problems for two whole hours. You’ve just been in the moment. That’s eternity.
So, experiencing eternity in this life is not some ethereal, super-spiritual event. We’ve all been there, even if only in rare moments. But what all the saints keep telling us is that we can learn to live more and more in eternity, now. Moses tells us even a scruffy bush can burn with the presence and voice of God—if we would only pay attention. William Blake claims we can find “eternity in a grain of sand”—if we just look deeply. Thomas Merton slipped into eternity on a busy street corner in Louisville, Kentucky, when he suddenly saw every person in the jostling crowd as a thousand Christs. Brother Lawrence says we can experience ecstatic union with God while “washing the pots and pans”—if we can stop seeing the mess as something we have to get through before we experience joy, now.
And there I was with the clattering cans and bottles. Dumping the recycling seemed so profane that I nearly laughed when those words came again to me. I walked back into the house with my empty trash can, thinking, “Eternity is right now.” Maybe. It just might be.
I walk about 30 minutes from Grand Central to my office in Hudson Yards most mornings. I am always impressed, saddened, uplifted, depressed by the countless people digging through trashcans for those precious bottles and cans.
Love the reference to that fleeting feeling of timelessness you get when with a loved one or at a movie (for me it’s at sporting events) and the bitterness, rage, depression is suspended in the now.
‘Brother Lawrence says we can experience ecstatic union with God while “washing the pots and pans” – Brother Lawrence I need to borrow your playbook! 😂
Yes—sporting events are another place of eternity, which is one sure reason why millions around the world pack stadiums. Music events are another big one. The music makes time stop in some way. All there is is this moment.
I really enjoyed this David! Thank you. While reading your story I was prompted to share the following…
Whether I sleep deep or light I dream. While I am aware that I am having dreams it is rare that I can recall what the dreams were. Every now and then I will have a dream that shows up in that place where sleeping and awakening overlap and when that occurs I will often remember the dream. A few weeks ago such an experience happened. In the dream my point of view was a zoomed out point of view and I was observing the myself. The myself was walking around a very large circle. In it’s right hand the myself was holding onto the handle of a wagon that it was pulling. Attached to this wagon was a train of such wagons and they were all full of all kinds of stuff (I couldn’t make out what the stuff was). The left hand of the myself was holding onto a grocery cart and this was being pushed forward. As I continued to observe this sight before me I noticed that the myself kept turning around to grab things out of one or another of the trailing wagons and then it would place these items into the grocery cart. Then I noticed that right in front of the grocery cart was the last wagon in the train of wagons. It was the caboose of the wagon train!
This dream remains on my mind’s desktop and I’ve pondered it often. My interpretation of the dream is this: The myself I was observing walking in a large circle pulling a trail of wagons and pushing a grocery cart (the future) that was being filled with items from the wagons being pulled (the past) is a metaphor for that tiny aspect of me that believes it is existing in linear time where there is always a past, present and future. The myself represents the present. Looking at what was happening, though, it was clear that the past and future were the same thing continuing to be recycled again and again and again…in a loop (a closed system). The “I” observing the myself was SELF. Where was this observation seeming to take place? Within eternity. Eternity has no outside.
Thanks, Monte—I think your interpretation is spot on!
This day has been something. I saw your post in my inbox but put off reading. I’m in the “taking care of your failing mother” season with my siblings. I finally read it tonight and my first thought was, “I hope this ‘now’ isn’t eternity – it just feels heavy.” But I see that the care giving, softening of hearts from past hurts, and small victories do shine with God’s Presence.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this—-because it all comes down to this, I’m convinced: either we have a spirituality, a notion of God, a sense of the divine plan that INCLUDES suffering—small and crushing—or we have something that won’t stand the test of time and the vagaries of human life. So—God is especially near you when you are caring for an ailing mother. That’s the reality…and we can get better and better at opening our hearts to that truth, no matter what feelings may be passing through us at any given moment.
Yes, I’m internalizing this truth. There isn’t comfort or peace or healing without distress, trouble, disease. In my spirit I know that God strengthens through the difficult – by “working all things together for the good of those who love him.” I’m working on my mindset, when feelings or weariness try to say otherwise. Thank you for the helpful reminder.
Well, I’ve taken off my shoes—I am on holy ground talking with you. You are in the midst of such pain, and yet you seek to keep an open heart—holy ground.