It is time

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

                                           Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

___________________________

We are constantly assailed

With voices from outside ourselves

Telling us what is true

What to believe

What is right

What is wrong

We are constantly responding

Reacting

Our hearts beat

Our heads roar

We are in turmoil

There is something ugly in all of this

All of this fear and anger

All of this exultation and ecstasy

For our emotions become weapons

Used against other

And sometimes, even, against ourselves

It is time

It is past time

To Stop

To Breathe

And then to listen

To the voices within

Not to the bully that lives in our brains

But to the voice of the Sacred that comes from that deep place

That place that persists

That is the truth

It is time

It is past time

To look at the sunrise, to feel the breeze

To wonder at the mountain

To watch the deer leap gracefully

And the fox glide through the field

Time to look around at that which comes

From the voice of the Sacred

It is time