Life and Death

I just finished my first novel by Wendell Berry (did you know he hand-writes everything?)

Andy Catlett is about (I think) Berry when he was a boy. The novel is told as if Andy is now an old man, but is remembering a trip to his grandparents house during WWII just before he turned 10. These are some of his reflections toward the end of the book.

Time is told by death, who doubts it? But time is always halved--for all we know, it is halved--by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present. Time is only the past and maybe the future; the present moment, dividing and connecting them, is eternal. The time of the past is there, somewhat, but only somewhat, to be remembered and examined. We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving, though we know nothing about it. But try and stop the present for you patient scrutiny, or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell, only as a leak in time, through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man, traveling as a child among the dead.

We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births. For time is told also by life. As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell remains open in welcome. I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren. Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always coming. And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, which is always present. Time, then, is told by love's losses, and by the coming of love, and by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever, the love by which the dead are alive and the unborn welcomed into the womb. The great question for the old and the dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude is lonely. Let us pray to be grateful to the last. 

We are alive in this flow of time ... I currently have four grandmothers, two mothers and two fathers, one wife (I'm not mormon you know) and three kids. This will change over time ... let us be grateful for this time that we live, for this present moment ... where we have the chance to be quiet enough to "let eternity fall upon us and make its claim."