Posted by Ben Curran on October 05, 2023 at 03:47:06:
In Reply to: Watch......and anticipate(1) posted by Ben Curran on October 03, 2023 at 09:07:01:
TWENTY MINUTES OF REALITY
by Margaret Prescott Montague. Published in Atlantic Monthly, November 1916.
I was lying on a cot on the porch of a hospital at the time, convalescing after a
serious illness. It was an ordinary cloudy March day. I am glad to think it was. I
am glad to remember that there was nothing extraordinary about the weather, nor any
unusualness of setting - no flush of Spring or beauty of scenery - to induce what I
saw. It was, on the contrary, almost a dingy day.
Yet here, in this everyday setting, and entirely unexpectedly (for I had never dreamed
of such a thing), my eyes were opened, and for the first time in all my life I caught a
glimpse of the ecstatic beauty of reality. I cannot recall now whether the revelation
came suddenly or gradually; I can only remember finding myself in the very midst of
those wonderful moments, beholding life for the first time in all its young
intoxication of loveliness, in its unspeakable joy, beauty and importance.
I cannot say exactly what the mysterious change was. I saw no new thing, but I saw all
the usual things in a miraculous new light - in what I believe is their true light. I
saw for the first time how wildly beautiful and joyous, beyond any words of mine to
describe, is the whole of life. Every human being moving across that porch, every
sparrow that flew, every branch tossing in the wind, was caught in and was part of the
whole mad ecstasy of loveliness, of joy, of importance, of intoxication of life.
It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I imagined all existence so beautiful, but
that my inner vision was cleared to the truth so that I saw the actual loveliness that
is always there, but which we so rarely perceive; and I knew that every man, woman bird
and tree, every living thing before me, was extravagantly beautiful and extravagantly
important. And as I beheld, my heart melted out of me in a rapture of love and
delight.
For those glorified moments I was in live with every living thing before me - the trees
in the wind, the little birds flying, the nurses, the interns, the people who came and
went. There was nothing that was alive that was not a miracle. Just to be alive was a
miracle in itself. My very soul flowed out of me in great joy.
For those fleeting lovely minutes I did in deed and in truth love my neighbour as
myself. Nay more; of myself I was hardly conscious, while with my neighbour in every
form, from wind-tossed branches and little sparrows flying, up to human beings, I was
madly in love.
This is how, for me, all fear of eternity has been wiped away. I have found a little
taste of bliss, and if Heaven can offer this, no eternity will be too long to enjoy the
miracle of existence. But that was not the greatest thing that those twenty minutes
revealed, and that did most to end fear of life everlasting. The great thing was the
realization that weariness. and boredom, and questions as to the use of it all, belong
entirely to unreality. When once we wake to Reality - whether we do so here or have to
wait for the next life for it, we shall never be bored, for in Reality there is no such
thing.
What if here we are only symbols of ourselves, and our real being is somewhere else -
perhaps in the heart of God?