A Place in Time

Winter Solstice

Stop and Observe.

Discover the moments

between Winter and Summer.

Embrace the perpetual change.

The distance between

two points in time

is always

Now.

CPW

image found in Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!

We have transitioned from 2018 to 2019, but by whose clock?

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the basis for civil time today. This 24-hour time standard is kept using highly precise atomic clocks combined with the Earth's rotation.

UTC is the time standard commonly used across the world. The world's timing centers have agreed to keep their time scales closely synchronized - or coordinated - therefore the name Coordinated Universal Time.

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/aboututc.html

As I sit here at Merry Mount absorbing the NOW, I contemplate the passing of time.  For guidance, I refer to Stephen Hawking’s final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, published in 2018 (the year of his death), and am reminded of his first best seller, A Brief History of Time.

It is cliché to write, time seems to pass more quickly each year, but that is how I feel today.

On January 1, 1987, our son, Simon Robinson Woliver was born.  Words can’t express the many blessings we have received during these 32 years.

T.S. Eliot writes:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Our existence is like a series of photographic snapshots. Technology allows us to freeze and capture time. For example, take a look at these four photographs:

Robbie holding Simon 

Simon with his daughters Joy (L) & Eva (R)

Merry Mount (circa 1950's)

Merry Mount (2018)

Time flies when one is having fun!

Now I am about to sound like a street barking, fire and brimstone fanatic, but seriously, in Hawking’s final book, he grapples with the following question: Will we survive on Earth?

Hawking makes reference to the Doomsday Clock (see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/world/americas/doomsday-clock-nuclear-scientists.html).  He believes that unless humans make some vital changes, mankind is quickly heading toward self-annihilation.  He bases his opinion on the state of global warming, population explosion, and political and societal greed and ignorance. This supposition, from the world’s most recognized scientist, equates with one held by my Papaw Woliver, who only had an eighth grade education.  Once again, I hear his words echoing in my ears, “Progress is eating itself up!”

On this first day of 2019, as I give thanks for the great beauty around me, and for the many blessings at Merry Mount, I shout out, “We can no longer be complacent, the TIME has arrived for us to speak out and take action so that thirty, fifty, or a hundred years from now our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren can live on an earth that is environmentally and politically in a better place than the one on which we presently find ourselves.

Happy New Year!

CPW