Excerpt - The Eternal Now - Thomas R. Kelley

In The Immediate Experience Of The Presence,The Now Is No Mere Nodal Point Between The Past And The Future. It Is The Region of Divine Presence Itself

No longer is the ribbon spread out with equal vividness before one, for the past matters less and the future matters less, for the Now contains all that is needed for the absolute satisfaction of our deepest cravings.

Why want, and yearn, and struggle, when the Now contains all one could ever wish for, and more? The present Now is not something from which we hurriedly escape, toward what is hoped will be a better future.

Instead of anxiety lest the future never yield all, we have hoped, lest we fail to contribute our full stint before the shadows of the evening fall upon our lives, we only breathe a quiet prayer to the Now and say: “Stay, thou art so sweet,”

Instead of anxiety lest our past, our past defects, our long-standing deficiencies blight our well-intentioned future efforts, all our past sense of weakness falls away and we stand erect, in this holy Now, joyous, serene, assured, unafraid.

Between the relinquished past and the untrodden future stands this holy Now, whose bulk has swelled to cosmic size, for within the Now is the dwelling place of God Himself. In the Now we are at home at last.

Is it just me, or do the crystal clear images associated with each of the upcoming days, weeks, months and years, become less and less vivid and more and more of an obscure blur - gaining speed and losing clarity with each succeeding year I live? I need to take Brother Lawrence & Thomas R. Kelly's admonition and learn to live in the "Eternal Now."

Spring Awakening

Last Night While Quietly Biking After Dark

I Felt In The Star-Filled Skies

A Startling Sense Of Vibrancy

Caused By The Cool, Clear, Crisp, Feel

And Smell Of The Spring-Time Air

Heightened Even More By Plunging Through

Assorted Pockets Of A Heavy Powerful Elixir -

The Exhilarating Aroma

Of Apple Tree Blossoms

ATTITUDE AND HEART

I Would Like To Have Seen

The Whole World With Eyes

Incapable Of Anything But Wonder,

And A Tongue Fluent Only In Praise

(Pay Conroy - Prince of Tides)

Disagreeing With Liberal Ideology Is Not The Same As Racism

A Letter To The Editor, In Response To Newspaper Beaver County Times, Editor JD Prose (03/28/10), That To Disagree With Liberal Progressives and Barak Obama - Is The Same As Racism.

I was not surprised by J.D. Prose's most recent column that accused anyone of not agreeing with President Barack Obama's policies as being a racist. (Question: how would Prose explain conservatives Lynn Swann, Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas and Alan Keyes?)

With feigned concern, Prose demurs sanctimoniously that these same people virtually invented hate-speech. Notably, Prose conveniently ignores the endless vitriol aimed at conservatives, particularly by hate-speech purveyors and apostles Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Joy Bahar, and even organizations like MoveOn.org.

Prose's poisoned penned jabs are either irresponsibly uniformed and/or intellectually disingenuous to consistently leverage alleged (many unsubstantiated - abhorrent if true) comments and activities from the fringe (endemic to both political parties) to make his best argument, raising the question of whether he's an ideologically bound propagandist or thoughtful journalist?

Parroting talking points from far-left leaning websites resembles many of the journalistic practices of the former Soviet Union's media outlets: Pravda and Tass.

People can genuinely rejoice in the election of an African American (who ran as a moderate) and still reject without being racist the inexorable attempts at social re-engineering, wealth-redistribution, entitlement machinations, legislative violations and financial shell games from ardent liberals.

Rich Grassel

Ambridge

Wednesday March 31, 2010 02:25 AM