Musings on Eternity (by Peter Elliott)

Poem 6 of 27 in "Be Meditated"

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Monday night St. Kilda meditation
John Main on his tape talks about faith
At some stage he mentions the word 'eternity'
And I mentally admit to ignorance
As to what eternity is.

The tape ends and we move about in our chairs
Getting ourselves comfortable
For the coming meditation.

Eyes closed, I have some visual impressions
Of a head wearing a spiky golden crown
And a part of me inside says this is Jesus.

Then it's as if I am all-of-a-sudden out in space
Looking at the earth, all cloudy and blue
Set jewel-like against an inky
Star-studded blackness.

The earth that has been orbiting the sun
For eons and eons
Hundreds of millions - could even be billions - of years
Virtually since time began.

And a different perspective with regard to time
Slowly dawns
I start to get a whiff, just a trace
Of what eternity means
In relation to my possible seventy year span
In relation to our culture's couple of millennia
Even in relation
To the aborigines' forty thousand years of dreaming
Eternity is a long, long time.

Then the meditation is over
And we are talking about
A daughter's broken arm
A trip to a conference in Queensland
And whether we can afford
To continue distributing the newsletter
Using only the proceeds
Of donations.

---(Peter Elliott)---

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