Blog No. 5

Coincidentally (in reference to yesterday's blog about challenges in finding one's Zion) I received my usual inspirational quote of the day via email.

This afternoon's apropos quote of the day:
"Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."
- Thomas Carlyle


Now I couldn't claim to know anything about this gentleman, so I wiki'ed him (as is apropos of my generation).  They list some of his definitions now collected in the "Nuttall Encyclopedia".  One that stood out to me is how he defined Centre of Immensities. By itself that is an intense sounding few words.  Say it out loud.

Centre of Immensities, an expression of Carlyle's to signify that wherever any one is, he is in touch with the whole universe of being, and is, if he knew it, as near the heart of it there as anywhere else he can be. 
Wow.

I am taking this to mean I don't have to even know what my Zion is to be on my way there.  I just need to do what needs to be done that moment (and doesn't life always seem to make it fairly clear what needs to be done ASAP??).  And that while I am doing that thing in that moment, I am exactly as close to the center of everything as I can ever be.  How special and meaningful is THAT?  (Add generational expression here:) OMG.

As I was thinking about Zion today, it occurred to me that it may be something like when there is a storm coming in.  You see the clouds in the distance, they thicken and then blot out the sun.  Then you can hear the wind in the trees in the distance, maybe even see them stir from afar, then see the leaves it's picking up with it on it's way to you (but all this time you actually don't feel anything), then BOOM it hits you.  You heard it coming, you saw it coming, but you didn't know what it felt like until you're caught in the gust of wind and swirl of leaves.  Once you're there, maybe you know.



Me contemplating the Centre of Immensities