Time

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth …

Late yesterday afternoon, at a small gathering of family and friends dear to Father David and Olive Damon - - our first rector at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Father Damon officiated our wedding nearly sixty years ago, and I last talked with him a few days before he died fairly recently - -  I found a Publix brand ham as delicious as the costly Easter ham I ordered from out west.

Before that gathering, I’d officiated a funeral, burial service for friends of standing longer than my own life, going back all my growing up years, lo into the life of my grandfather and the 1936 hurricane that obliterated Pop’s fish house that was out on the pier where now stands Landmark Condominiums at WBeachDrive and Frankford Avenue. At this age, even the earthly residuals of my own personal memories slowly evaporate, dissipate into the ether of eternity. Not sad, it’s simply the nature and way of Creation and seasons of life on earth:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:

• a time to be born, and a time to die;

• a time to kill, and a time to heal;

• a time to break down, and a time to build up;

• a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

• a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

• a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

• a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

• a time to get, and a time to lose;

• a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

• a time to rend, and a time to sew;

• a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

• a time to love, and a time to hate;

• a time of war, and a time of peace.

What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 KJV)

Again, neither sad nor maudlin, it’s simply deeply personal to watch reality disappear into history as the sun continues daily.