October 15, 2005

Glynn Cardy

Eccles 3:1-8

Life is like a clothes dryer: the tumbler variety that accepts all manner of apparel and tosses them around. I'll leave it to your imagination who or what might be the old socks, or bright knickers. In 50 years the clothes dryer of your life has seen a great variety of garments. 

So, with apologies to the author of Ecclesiastes, I name the following:

There is a time for laughter, a time for sorrow, and the quiet joy that can flow through good times and bad.

There is a time for having children, having enough of children, having not enough of children, and a time for savouring the adults one's children have become.

There is a time for quiet, a time for noise, and a time for finding the peaceful places one needs.

There is a time for birth, and a time for death, and for supporting one another through both.

There is a time for God, a time for no God, for losing and finding God, for utterance and silence, holiness and wholeness.

There is a time for the mundane and a time for the unexpected, and a time for contentment with whatever life brings.

There is a time for money, a time for no money, and a time to give thanks for the wealth you have.

There is a time for doing little things and wanting to do big things; for doing big things and pining for little things; and a time for not to do but to be.

There is a time for starting and a time for starting again; a time for falling and not being afraid to fall; and a time for celebrating both.

There is a time to hold on to things, for letting go of things, and of holding and being held by everything and nothing.

There is a time for being young, a time for growing old, and a time for valuing the wisdom in both.

There is a time for patience, a time for haste, and a time to match the pace of your heart.

There is a time for companionship, for aloneness, and a time for family and friends who respect our need for both.

There is a time for bubbling love, a time when love is flat, and a time when committed love is the only thing that sustains us.

Love is the beginning and the end, the comfort and the challenge, and the joy and purpose of our life.

May your clothes dryer keep spinning with the energy and potency of that love.